1— . 


Stom  f ^e  feifirari?  of 

(profeBBor  T3?tfftdtn  J^^^^S  (Kreen 

QBequeaf 9eb  61?  ^im  fo 
f  ^e  feifitat*)?  of 

(Princeton  C^eofogtcdf  ^emtnatg 


JESUS  AND  JONAH 


I.  Review  of  a  Symposium  on  Our  Lord's 
Remarks  Respecting  Jonah. 

II.  Review  of  Prof.  Driver  on  the  Book 
OF  Jonah. 

III.  Is  THE  Story  of  Jonah  Incredible? 

IV.  The  Three  Days  and  the  Three  Nights. 


BY 

J.  W.  McGAEYEY 

President  of  the  College  of  the  Bible,  Lexington,  Kentucky. 


CmCINNATI,  0.: 
THE  STANDARD  PUBLISHING  CO. 

Publishers  of  Christian  Literature 


Copyright,  1896,  by 
The  Standard  Publishing  Company 


TO   THE    EMINENT    HEBRAIST, 

PF^OPESSOI^   WILLIAM    HBNI^Y    GP^BEN, 

OF    PRINCETON, 

THE  ACKNOWLEDGED   LEADER   OF    AMERICAN    SCHOLARS   THROUGHOUT 

A    WHOLE   GENERATION    IN    DEFENDING    THE    BIBLE 

AGAINST    DESTRUCTIVE   CRITICISM, 

THIS    DEFENSE   OF    ONE    OF    ITS   SMALLEST    BOOKS,    IS    WITH 

HIS    APPROVAL    GRATEFULLY    INSCRIBED. 


PREFACE. 


The  contents  of  this  volume,  with  the  exception 
of  the  dissertation  on  The  Three  Days  and  Three 
Nights,  were  first  published  in  the  Critical  Depart- 
ment of  the  Christian  Standard.  They  are  repub- 
lished in  more  permanent  form  at  the  request  of 
many  readers,  and  with  the  hope  that  they  will 
thus  have  a  more  extended  circulation.  If  they 
shall  cause  any  to  more  highly  appreciate  the  inim- 
itable story  of  Jonah,  and  to  have  a  firmer  faith  in 
the  utterances  of  Jesus,  they  will  serve  the  purpose 
for  which  both  publications  have  been  made. 

The  Author. 
March,  1896. 


mTHODUOTlON. 


BY  PROFESSOR  WILLIAM  HENRY  GREEN, 

PRINCETON   THEOLOGICAL   SEMINARY. 


The  a  titude  of  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  toward  the  Old 
Testament  is  a  source  of  great  embarrassment  to  those  who 
acknowledge  him  as  a  Divine  Teacher,  and  yet  are  not  in  accord 
with  his  views  on  this  subject.  The  puzzle  is  to  reconcile  the 
uniqueness  of  his  person  as  the  incarnate  Son  of  God,  the 
uniqueness  of  his  claim  to  implicit  reverence  and  confidence, 
and  his  supreme  authority  as  a  Divine  Teacher,  with  the  admis- 
sion that  he  was  or  could  be  mistaken  in  any  of  his  teachings, 
or  that  he  ever  gave  his  sanction  to  the  errors  or  mistakes  of 
others.  The  difficulty  created  by  his  attestation  given  to  other 
parts  of  the  Old  Testament  recurs  in  equal  measure  in  the 
language  which  he  uses  respecting  the  Book  of  Jonah.  The 
attempt  to  save  his  authority  by  minimizing  the  force  of  his 
words  can  neither  be  acceptable  to  him,  nor  can  it  answer  its 
mistaken  purpose. 

There  is  no  reason  for  discrediting  the  Book  of  Jonah, 
unless  it  is  to  be  found  in  the  contends  of  the  book  itself.  The 
extraordinary  and  supernatural  occurrences  here  related  can 
not  be  pronounced  incredible  by  him  who  believes  in  the 
reality  of  the  miracles  recorded  elsewhere  in  the  Bible,  unless 
their  nature  is  such,  or  the  occasion  is  such  as  to  justify 
any  one  in  affirming  that  they  are  mere  freaks  of  power  with 
no  worthy  end,  mere  prodigies,  so  out  of  analogy  with  all  true 


viii.  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

miracles,  that  it  is  altogether  insupposable  that  God  could,  or 
wou  d,  have  wrought  them.  But  how  can  any  one  venture  upon 
euch  an  assertion  in  view  of  the  fact  that  the  Lord  Jesus  speaks 
of  them  without  in  any  way  suggesting  that  they  were  incom- 
patible with  the  character  of  God,  and  that  he  even  puts  the 
most  marvelous  of  them  in  relation  to  his  own  stupendous 
miracle  of  rising  from  the  dead,  the  one  a  sign  to  the  Ninevites, 
the  o.her  to  tlie  men  of  hia  own  generation. 


JESUS  AND  JONAH. 


I.    A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED. 

I  believe  it  to  be  universal  with  critics  of  the  new 
school  and  their  disciples,  to  deny  the  historical  reality 
of  the  story  of  Jonah.  Those  of  them  who  still  believe 
in  Jesus  Christ,  find  it  necessary  to  reckon  with  a  state- 
ment from  his  lips,  found  in  Matthew  xii.  38-41.  The 
passage  seems  to  contain  a  positive  affirmation  of  the 
reality  of  the  two  events  which  render  the  story  of 
Jonah  incredible  in  the  judgment  of  most  of  these  gen- 
tlemen, and  they  have  felt  the  necessity  of  setting  aside 
in  some  way  its  apparent  force.    The  passage  reads  thus : 

Then  certain  of  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  answered  him, 
saying,  Master,  we  would  see  a  sign  from  thee.  But  he  answered 
and  said  unto  them,  An  evil  and  adulterous  generation  seeketh 
after  a  sign ;  and  there  shall  no  sign  be  given  to  it  but  the  sign  of 
Jonah  the  prophet:  for  as  Jonah  was  three  days  and  three 
nights  in  the  belly  of  the  sea  monster,  so  shall  the  Son  of  man 
be  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  heart  of  the  earth.  The 
men  of  Nineveh  shall  stand  up  in  the  judgment  with  ihis  gener- 
ation, and  shall  condemn  it:  for  they  repented  at  the  preaching 
of  Jonah ;  and  behold  a  greater  than  Jonah  is  here. 

In  demanding  of  Jesus  a  sign,  the  scribes  and  Phar- 
isees denied  by  implication  that  any  of  the  multitude  of 
signs  which  he  had  wrought  were  real  signs ;  and  their 
demand  was  for  one  of  a  different  kind.  In  answering 
that  no  sign  should  be  given  but  that  of  the  prophet 


2  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

Jonah,  he  could  not  have  meant  that  he  would  give  no 
more  of  the  kind  which  he  had  been  giving;  for  he  did 
give  more  of  these,  and  in  great  abundance;  but  he 
meant  that  none  should  be  given  of  a  d  fferent  kind, 
except  the  sign  of  Jonah.  This  was  different,  in  that  it 
was  wrought  upon  him,  and  not  by  him,  and  it  was 
therefore  a  more  direct  and  manifest  exhibition  of  power 
from  heaven.  He  explains  what  he  means  by  the  sign 
of  Jonah,  by  adding:  "As  Jonah  was  three  days  and 
three  nights  in  the  belly  of  the  sea- monster,  so  shall  the 
Son  of  man  be  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  heart 
of  the  earth/'  He  then  affirms,  that  because  the  men 
of  Nineveh  repented  at  the  preaching  of  Jonah,  and  the 
men  of  his  own  generation  repented  not  at  his  own 
greater  preaching,  the  former  shall  rise  up  in  the  judg- 
ment and  condemn  the  latter;  that  is,  cause  them  to 
receive  a  severer  sentence. 

To  the  great  mass  of  readers  in  every  age  and 
country,  it  has  appeared  that  Jesus  here  assumes  as  a 
settled  fact  that  Jonah  was  in  the  great  fish  as  described 
in  the  Book  of  Jonah,  and  that  the  Ninevites  actually 
repented  under  the  influence  of  his  preaching.  So  obvi- 
ous does  this  appear  that  probably  no  human  being  has 
ever  raised  a  question  about  it  until  after  he  has  reached 
the  conclusion  that  the.se  two  events  are  incredible. 
Then  he  must  get  rid  of  this  obvious  meaning,  or  deny 
the  truthfulness  of  an  assertion  made  by  Jesus  Christ. 
Many  attempts  at  the  former  have  been  made  in  recent 
years,  and  I  propose,  in  this  volume,  to  put  every  one 
of  them  to  the  test,  so  far  as  they  have  come  under  my 
notice.  I  do  this,  not  because  it  is  a  matter  of  supreme 
importance  in  itself  to  know  whether  Jonah  was 
swallowed  by  the  fish  and  thrown  up  again,  but  because 


A  S  YMP  OSIUM  RE  VIE  WED.  3 

the  question  involves  principles  of  interpretation  which 
affect  every  statement  made  by  our  Lord  with  reference 
to  events  mentioned  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  in  refer- 
ence to  the  authorship  of  some  of  its  books.  It  is  really 
a  question  as  to  whether  Jesus  is  to  be  received  as  a 
competent  witness  respecting  historical  and  literary 
matters  of  the  ages  which  preceded  his  own.  If  he  is 
not,  then  the  conception  of  his  person  and  his  powers 
which  believers  have  hitherto  entertained  must  undergo 
very  serious  modifications,  even  if  it  shall  not  be  totally 
abandoned.  One  of  the  editors  of  the  Biblical  World, 
Professor  Shailer  Mathews,  has  felt  the  need  of  some 
efforts  to  settle  this  question,  and  in  the  number  of  that 
magazine  for  June,  1895,  he  published  a  symposium,  the 
origin  of  which  he  states  in  these  words : 

In  order  to  learn  how  far  this  passage,  with  its  explicit  ref- 
erence, is  held  by  the  teachers  of  religion  to  set  Christ's  seal 
upon  the  story  of  Jonah,  letters  were  sent  to  a  considerable 
number  of  representative  pastors  and  teachers,  asking  them  to 
give  the  readers  of  the  Biblical  World  their  opinions.  The  fol- 
lowing replies  have  been  received  in  time  for  publication  in  this 
number  (p.  417). 

Eight  replies  are  published,  contributed  respectively 
by  Lemuel  C.  Barnes,  Pittsburg,  Pa.;  J.  Henry  Thayer, 
Harvard  Divinity  School;  Franklin  Johnson,  Univer- 
sity of  Chicago ;  William  DeW.  Hyde,  Bowdoin  Col- 
lege;  Philip  S.  Moxom  Springfield,  Mass.;  Rush  Rhees, 
Newtown  Theological  Institution;  A mory  H.  Bradford, 
First  Congregational  Church,  Montclair,  N.  J.;  and  C. 
J.  H.  Ropes,  Bangor  Theological  Seminary. 

The  editor  sums  up  the  result  of  the  symposium  in 
the  following  statement  at  the  close  of  the  series: 

It  is  not  difficult  to  formulate  the  common  belief  found  in 
these  statements  of  men  who  differ  greatly  in  their  attitude 


4  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

toward  many  theological  questions.  It  is  this:  Christ's  use  of 
the  experience  of  Jonah  as  an  illustration  in  no  way  gives  his 
sanction  to  the  view  that  the  Book  of  Jonah  is  history  (p.  430). 

It  strikes  me  as  rather  singular  that  the  editor  here 
speaks  of  "  Christ's  use  of  the  experience  of  Jonah/' 
when  Jonah  had  no  such  experience.  Does  the  editor 
here  unconsciously  betray  the  fact  that  the  veality  of 
this  experience  is  so  impressed  on  his  own  mind  that  he 
unintentionally  concedes  it  while  arguing  against  it  ? 

I  confess  myself  ignorant  of  the  special  qualifications 
of  all  these  eight  scholars,  with  the  exception  of  Pro- 
fessor Thayer,  of  Hartford,  whose  reputation  is  inter- 
national; but  I  assume  from  the  positions  which  they 
occupy,  and  from  the  choice  made  of  them  by  the  editor, 
that  they  are  all  men  of  competent  attainments.  I  shall, 
therefore,  treat  their  positions,  and  the  reasons  by  which 
they  defend  them,  as  the  best  that  can  be  said  by  men 
on  their  side  of  the  question. 

Professor  Thayer  is  the  only  one  of  the  eight  who 
says  plainly  what  he  thinks  of  the  Book  of  Jonah. 
He  says : 

In  my  judgment,  the  characteristics  of  the  Book  of  Jonah 
favor  the  opinion  that  it  is  an  apologue,  or  "religious  novel,"  a 
composition  didactic  in  its  aim.  How  large  a  historic  element  it 
contains  can  hardly  be  determined  (417). 

It  seems  from  this  that  the  book,  though  a  novel, 
contains  a  historic  element;  but  how  large  this  element 
is,  the  Professor  can  not  determine.  As  fact  is  some- 
times stranger  than  fiction,  why  not  suppose  that  Jonah's 
experience  in  the  fish  is  the  historical  element,  and  that 
the  novel  was  woven  around  this  central  fact?  Nothing 
in  the  sentence  just  quoted,  or  in  all  that  the  Professor 
has  said,  conflicts  with  this  supposition;  and  yet  this  is 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  5 

apparently  the  very  thing  of  all  in  the  book  which  he 
would  most  seriously  doubt. 

While  Professor  Thayer  can  not  determine  the 
amount  of  historic  matter  in  the  book,  Professor  Hyde 
is  equally  unable  to  determine  what  Jesus  meant  by  his 
allusion  to  it.     He  says  : 

I  should  rather  not  commit  myself  to  an  exegesis  of  such  a 
highly  figurative  pa.«f:age  as  Matthew  xii.  39,  40.  A  man's  exe- 
gesis of  such  a  passage  as  that  is  bound  to  be  simply  a  reading 
into  it  of  his  gei.eral  conception  of  things.  What  it  says  is  as 
plain  as  A,  B,  C.  It  requires  no  exegesis  to  determine  that.  It 
may  mean  any  one  of  ten  thousand  things  to  as  many  readers. 
Just  precisely  what  Jesus  meant  by  it  we  shall  never  know  (419). 

This  Professor  has  certainly  made  a  new  discovery. 
It  is  the  discovery  of  a  fact  which  no  man  ever  before 
suspected,  the  fact  that  this  passage,  the  meaning  of 
which  has  hitherto  given  commentators  no  serious  diffi- 
culty, is  so  obscure  that  it  may  mean  any  one  of  ten 
thousand  things  to  as  many  readers;  and  that  what 
Jesus  really  meant,  '^  we  shall  never  know.''  If  we  have 
to  choose  between  ten  thousand  different  meanings,  I  am 
afraid  that  we  shall  never  know,  sure  enough.  But 
perhaps  the  figures  can  be  reduced  a  little,  as  in  case 
of  the  man  who  was  starting  the  song, — 

*'  My  soul  be  on  thy  guard, 
Ten  thousand  foes  arise." 

When  he  got  to  "  ten  thousand,''  the  tune  suddenly  rose 
so  high  that  he  could  not  reach  it;  but  after  he  had 
made  two  or  three  vain  attempts,  a  neighbor  whispered  : 
"  Put  it  down  to  Jive  hundred  and  you  can  reach  it.^^  Per- 
haps, when  our  Professor  gets  over  the  excitement  of  his 
new  discovery,  he  will  put  his  figures  down.  Scientific 
critics  should  aim  at  exactness. 


6  JESUS  AND  JONAH.    ■ 

One  of  these  writers,  Mr.  Moxom,  cuts  the  Gordian 
knot,  by  pronouncing  the  remark  about  Jonah  and  the 
fish  a  spurious  addition  to  Matthew^s  narrative.  He 
says: 

I  agree  with  Wendt  that  verse  40  is  an  interpolation.  The 
sign  to  which  Jesus  refers  in  verse  39  is  evidently  the  propliet 
preaching  repentance.  As  Jonah  preached  to  the  Ninevites,  so 
Jesus  preached  to  the  men  of  his  time.  There  are  coherency 
and  force  in  the  passage,  verses  39  and  41  if  we  leave  out  verse  40. 
Verse  40  introduces  a  new  idea,  and  one  that  is  not  strictly 
congruous  with  the  others  (420). 

I  suppose  that  a  meaning  of  the  passage  is  implied 
in  these  remarks,  which  we  might  count  as  one  of  Pro- 
fessor Hyde's  ten  thousand.  But  we  shall  not  dwell 
upon  it;  for  the  writer  virtually  takes  back  what  I  have 
quoted  when  he  says  in  the  very  next  sentence :  "There 
is,  as  far  as  I  know,  no  evidence  that  verse  40  is  a 
gloss."  I  suppose  he  means,  no  evidence  other  than 
conjecture ;  and  in  this  he  is  right.  Having  conceded 
this,  he  goes  outside  the  laws  of  textual  criticism  in 
holding  the  passage  to  be  spurious.  A  theory  which 
demands  the  erasure  of  Scripture  to  make  room  for  itself 
is  self- evidently  unscriptural. 

Only  one  of  these  writers.  Professor  Ropes,  ventures 
to  say  explicitly  what  Jesus  thought  of  the  Book  of 
Jonah.     He  says : 

I  have  no  douht  Jesus  supposed  the  Book  of  Jonah  was  his- 
torical, and  have  no  objection  to  believing  that  he  thought  the 
same  of  the  sea-monster  miracle,  though  the  evidence  is  less 
cogent.  But  the  attempt  to  use  such  facts  in  the  higher  criticism 
controversy  seems  to  be  founded  on  a  radically  erroneous  view 
of  Christ's  knowledge  while  on  earth  (429). 

According  to  th's  writer,  then,  Jesus  labored  under 
a  mistake  in  regaid  to  the  book;  for  he  supposed  it  to 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  7 

be  historical^  when  it  was  not.      Yet  the  same  writer 
says  in  the  next  paragraph : 

Throughout  his  ministry,  Jesus  showed  full  knowledge  of 
all  that  I  elonged  to  the  revelation  he  brought,  and  exercised  the 
prophetic  gifts  of  insight  into  character  and  future  events. 

This  concession  falsifies  the  preceding  statement ;  for, 
if  Jesus  showed  full  knowledge  of  all  that  belonged  to 
the  revelation  which  he  brought,  then  he  had  full  knowl- 
edge of  all  the  Old  Testament  records,  so  far,  at  least, 
as  he  made  use  of  them.  But  he  did  make  a  most  im- 
portant use  of  the  two  principal  incidents  recorded  in  the 
Book  of  Jonah.  He  did  suppose,  says  our  professor, 
ihat  this  book  was  historical;  and  his  full  knowledge 
implies  that  what  he  thus  supposed  he  also  knew.  He 
knew,  then,  that  the  Book  of  Jonah  was  historical ;  and 
the  attempt  to  use  such  facts  as  arguments  in  the  higher 
criticism  controversy  is  not,  as  he  affirms,  founded  on 
'^an  erroneous  view  of  Christ's  knowledge  while  on 
earth.'' 

This  writer  has  another  remark,  in  the  line  of  the 
first  one  quoted  above,  which  I  must  notice. 

But,  receiving  his  authority  absolutely  in  the  spheres  of 
religion  and  morality,  I  do  not  see  why  his  knowledge  of  the 
literary  history  of  the  Old  Testament  should  have  differed  essen- 
tially from  that  of  his  contemporaries,  any  more  than  his  knowl- 
edge of  chemistry  or  astronomy  (430). 

I  could  better  estimate  this  remark  if  I  understood 
the  writer  to  hold  that  the  Old  Testament  has  no  more 
connection  with  "  the  spheres  of  religion  and  morality  " 
than  chemistry  and  astronomy  have ;  but  if  he  receives, 
as  he  says  he  does,  the  divine  authority  of  Christ  in  the 
spheres  of  morality  and  religion,  then  he  must  receive 


8  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

as  true  those  records  in  the  Old  Testament  on  the  truth 
of  which  Jesus  based  certain  of  his  moral  and  religious 
teachings. 

This  inconsistency  in  Professor  Ropes  is  but  an  illus- 
tration of  the  fact  which  will  again  and  again  appear  as 
we  proceed  with  this  symposium,  that  no  man  can  accept 
the  divine  authority  of  Jesus,  and  reject  his  endorsement 
of  the  Old  Testament,  without  self-contradiction.  I 
wonder,  by  the  by,  how  this  Professor  ascertained  that 
Jesus  was  as  ignorant  as  his  contemporaries  were  of 
chemistry  and  astronomy  ? 

Before  I  notice  the  direct  arguments  by  which  these 
eight  writers  attempt  to  make  good  their  common 
position,  I  wish  first  to  settle,  if  possible,  what  our 
Saviour  meant  by  "the  sign  of  Jonah,'^  in  the  assertion, 
"  No  sign  shall  be  given  but  the  sign  of  Jonah  the 
prophet.'^  Some  of  them  take  the  position  that  Jonah^s 
preaching  to  the  Ninevites  was  the  sign.  Thus,  Mr. 
Moxom  says : 

The  sign  to  which  Jesus  refers,  in  verse  39,  is  evidently  the 
prophet  preaching  repentance.  As  Jonah  preached  to  the  Nine- 
vites,  so  Jesus  preached  to  the  men  of  his  time.  ...  In 
brief,  then,  I  take  the  meaning  to  be  this:  Jesus  declines  to 
furnish  any  sign  in  response  to  the  demand  of  the  Scribes  and 
Pharisees,  save  the  obvious  one  of  himself  preaching  repentance 
to  them,  as  Jonah  preached  to  the  Ninevites  (420). 

To  the  same  effect  Professor  Ropes  says : 

The  ques  ion  is :  How  did  Jonah  become  a  sign?  Matthew 
replies,  by  the  f>ea-monster  miracle,  analogous  to  Christ's  r^  sur- 
rection.  But  Luke  xi.  80  may  mean  tiiat  Jonah  was  a  sign  Ike 
Christ,  by  preaching  repentance  in  view  of  coming  judgment. 
Conservatives  underestimate  the  strength  of  this  view  by  assum- 
ing it  implies  that  Jonah's  sign  was  only  a  call  to  repentance. 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  9 

Jonah  cried,  "  Yet  forty  days  and  Nineveh  shall  be  overthrown." 
ISo  Christ  proclaimed :  "  Repent,  or  Jerusalem  shall  be  over- 
thrown ;"  and  in  conduct  and  destiny  the  Jews  strongly  contrast 
with  the  Ninevites  (428). 

If  the  view  of  Luke's  meaning  here  expressed  is 
correct,  it  contradicts  the  meaning  ascribed  to  Matthew ; 
and  I  am  not  sure  which  view  the  writer  really  takes. 
He  certainly  understands  Matthew  correctly ;  or  rather, 
he  understands  correctly  the  words  of  Jesus  reported  by 
Matthew ;  for  when  Jesus  says,  "  No  sign  shall  be  given 
save  the  sign  of  Jonah/'  and  then  immediately  adds : 
"  For  as  Jonah  was  in  the  belly  of  the  sea  monster  three 
days  and  three  nights,  so  shall  the  Son  of  man  be  three 
days  and  three  nights  in  the  heart  of  the  earth,^'  he 
certainly  explains  by  the  last  remark  what  he  means  by 
the  sign  of  Jonah.  His  own  resurrection,  after  entomb- 
ment for  three  days,  is  called  the  sign  of  Jonah,  because 
of  the  similarity  of  the  two  miracles.  This  view  is  con- 
firmed by  the  consideration  that  it  was  undoubtedly  a 
miraculous  sign  which  the  scribes  and  Pharisees  de- 
manded; and  the  word  sign  in  his  answer  must  be 
understood  in  the  same  sense.  It  is  also  confirmed  by 
the  consideration  that  the  word  rendered  sign  (seemeion) 
is  used  almost  exclusively  in  the  New  Testament  for 
signs  of  a  miraculous  character.  Indeed,  it  is  the  word 
most  usually  translated  miracle.  Those  works  which 
we  call  miracles  are  in  the  New  Testament  designated 
by  three  different  Greek  words.  They  are  called  mighty 
works  (dunameis),  because  of  the  divine  power  exhib- 
ited in  them.  They  are  called  wonders  (terafa),  because 
of  the  wonder  which  they  excite  in  the  beholder ;  and 
they  are  called  signs  (seemeia),  because  they  always  sig- 
nify something  connected  with  the  will  of  God. 


10  JESUS  AND  JONAB. 

This  view  is  furthermore  confirmed,  and  made,  I 
think,  altogether  certain,  by  the  parallel  passage  in 
Luke,  who  quotes  another  remark  of  Jesus  not  reported 
by  Matthew.  According  to  his  report,  Jesus  said : 
"  For  even  as  Jonah  was  a  sign  to  the  Ninevites,  so 
shall  also  the  Son  of  man  be  to  this  generation  '^  (xi. 
30).  This  is  not  to  be  regarded  as  a  different  version 
of  the  Lord's  answer,  but  only  as  an  additional  part  of 
the  whole  answer,  Luke  giving  one  part  and  Matthew 
the  other,  as  they  very  often  do.  Jesus  then  asserts  that 
Jonah  was  a  sign  to  the  Ninevites,  and  he  uses  the  word 
sign,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  sense  of  a  miracle.  But 
how  could  Jonah  have  been  a  miraculous  sign  to  the 
Ninevites?  He  wrought  no  miracle  among  them ;  and 
his  preaching  could  not  have  been  regarded  by  them  as 
miraculous  until,  by  means  of  some  separate  miraculous 
sign  they  were  convinced  that  it  was  a  miraculous  pre- 
diction. That  which  made  him  a  sign  to  the  Ninevites 
must  then  have  been  his  experience  in  the  fish,  con- 
nected as  it  was  with  the  command  twice  given  to  go 
and  cry  against  Nineveh. 

One  of  the  eight  writers  in  the  symposium,  while 
agreeing  with  the  others  on  the  main  question  under 
discussion,  avows  explicitly  the  view  just  stated  of  the 
sign  of  Jonah.     He  says: 

I 

Apt,  therefore,  as  is  the  story  of  Jonah's  preaching  to  illus- 
trate the  relation  of  Jesus  to  his  generation,  the  wording  of  Luke 
xi.  30,  and  what  we  know  of  the  habits  of  interpretation  in  Jesus' 
day,  lead  to  the  conclusion  that  Luke's  more  general  explanation 
of  tlie  sign  of  Jonah  should  be  understood  in  the  sense  of  Mat- 
thew's more  concrete  interpretation;  and  to  the  conviction  that 
in  the  use  Jesus  made  of  the  words,  the  sign  of  Jonah  was  the 
deliverance  by  which  he  came  to  be  the  bearer  to  Nineveh  of  the 
effective  warning  which  led  to  the  people's  repentance.     The 


A  S  YMPOlStUM  RE  VIE  WED.  11 

explanation  of  the  sign  of  Jonah  in  Matthew  xii.  40,  and  Luke 
xi.  30,  may  be  paraphrased  thus:  As,  in  the  personal  experience 
of  Jonah,  God  proved  to  him,  and  afterward  to  those  wlio  heard 
of  his  attempted  flight,  that  he  was  the  chosen  messenger  to  the 
Ninevites;  so  in  the  personal  experience  of  the  Son  of  man  will 
God  prove  to  all  men  that  he  is  the  appointed  messenger  to  this 
generation.  This  sign  in  each  case  is  the  personal  exper.ence  of 
the  prophet  (Professor  Rhees,  423,  424). 

Professor  Ropes  also  appears  to  take  the  same  posi- 
tion, and  he  quotes  with  approval  a  statement  of  the 
analogy  drawn  by  Jesus,  from  the  pen  of  Grass.  Here 
is  what  he  says  of  this  point : 

Perhaps  Christ's  hearers  would  naturally  think  of  the  sea- 
monster  miracle  as  the  sign  of  Jonah.  And  here,  too,  a  good 
analogy  may  be  found.  "  In  Jonah's  life  a  miracle  occurred 
which  could  have  exerted  a  controlling  influence  in  vanquishing 
opposition  to  him.  Yet  this  did  n't  help  the  Ninevites,  since 
they  learned  nothing  about  it,  but  had  come  to  the  decision  on 
the  basis  of  Jonah's  preaching  alone.  Even  so  in  Christ's  life, 
a  miracle  was  about  to  occur  which  could  exert  a  controlling 
influence  in  drawing  men  to  him.  Yet  this  would  no  more 
help  this  generation  to  come  to  a  decision  than  the  Jonah  sign 
helped  the  Ninevites;  they  must  decide  on  the  sole  basis  of 
Chjist's  preaching"  (428). 

While  these  two  writers  differ  from  two  others  of 
the  eight  in  agrceiiiiJ:  that  the  sign  of  Jonah  is  the  mir- 
acle wrought  on  Jouih's  person,  the  latter,  forgetting 
the  very  words  of  Jesus  on  which  he  is  commenting, 
declares  that  the  Ninevites  were  not  helped  by  the  sign 
"  since  they  learned  nothing  about  it.''  How  could  it 
be  true,  then,  that  he  was  a  sign  to  the  Ninevites?  How 
could  an  event  be  a  sign  to  a  people  when  they  had 
never  heard  of  it?  And,  stranger  still,  this  Professor 
says  that  the  sign  which  Jesus  was  about  to  give  by  his 


12  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

resurrection  would  not  help  his  generation  to  come  to  a 
decision,  when  the  facts  in  the  Book  of  Acts  show  that 
it  did  help  them  by  causing  many  thousand  to  come 
to  a  decision  under  the  preaching  of  the  apostles. 

But  did  the  Ninevites  hear  of  the  sign  of  Jonah  be- 
fore they  repented  at  his  preaching?  These  men  and 
many  others  answer,  no ;  and  they  so  answer  because 
the  fact  is  not  stated  in  the  Book  of  Jonah.  But  while 
it  is  not  stated  in  that  book,  it  is  sj:ated  by  Jesus,  and 
there  is  nothing  in  the  book  which  conflicts  with  the 
statement.  On  the  contrary,  the  book  leaves  the  way 
open  for  the  supposition  that  the  news  of  the  miracle 
reached  Nineveh  as  soon  as  Jonah  did,  if  not  sooner. 
When  he  was  landed  from  the  mouth  of  the  fish  the 
story  immediately  became  known  to  the  men  who  found 
him  on  the  seashore,  or  to  whose  house  he  resorted 
for  food.  It  is  not  probable  that  after  fasting  and  suflPer- 
ing  as  he  did  for  three  days,  he  was  able  at  once  to 
travel  toward  home.  The  story,  then,  would  start  ahead 
of  him.  When  he  reached  home,  we  are  not  told  that 
the  Lord  renewed  immfdiately  the  command  to  go  to 
Nineveh.  For  aught  that  is  said  in  the  text  to  the 
contrary,  he  may  have  remained  in  quiet  at  home  for  a 
week,  or  a  month,  before  this  command  came  to  him; 
and  certainly  if  God  desired  the  sign  to  have  its  effect 
in  advance  on  the  Ninevites,  he  would  delay  the  com- 
mand sufficiently  for  the  purpose. 

That  this  view  of  the  sign,  and  of  its  conveyance  to 
the  Ninevites,  is  correct,  is  finally  proved  by  the  nature 
of  the  analogy  which  Jesus  draws.  The  sign  which  he 
gave  to  the  men  of  his  generation  by  his  resurrection 
from  the  dead,  was  communicated  to  them  in  all  its 
details  by  the  apostles.     Otherwise  it  could  have  been 


A  SYMPOSIUM  RE  ^'lEWED.  13 

to  them  no  sign.  Necessarily,  then,  if  there  was  a  real 
analogy,  and  not  a  sophistical  assertion  of  one,  the  sign 
in  the  person  of  Jonah  must  have  been  communicated 
to  the  Ninevites,  and  it  must,  as  in  the  other  case,  have 
been  the  controlling  evidence  on  which  their  faith  and 
their  consequent  repentance  rested.  In  view  of  all 
these  considerations,  I  hope  I  shall  not  be  considered 
too  confident  when  I  say  that  the  sign  of  Jonah  was  the 
miracle  wrought  on  his  person,  and  that  this  was  cer- 
tainly known  to  the  Ninevites  before  they  repented  at 
his  preaching. 

Only  one  of  the  eight  writers  whose  symposium  I 
am  reviewing,  Professor  Ropes,  denies  that  Jesus  had 
knowledge  of  the  literary  history  of  the  Old  Testament 
above  that  of  his  contemporaries.  The  other  seven, 
in  arguing  that  his  remark  about  Jonah  does  not  com- 
mit him  to  the  historical  reality  of  the  story,  appeal  to 
what  they  consider  parallel  remarks  which  convey  no 
similar  implication.  TaUng  them  in  the  order  in  which 
I  find  them,  I  shall  carefully  consider  what  they  say  on 
this  point. 

Mr.  Barnes  puts  the  argument  thus  : 

Jesus  enforcf  d  the  message  upon  his  lettered  hearers  with 
classic  point,  as  in  speaking  to  the  students  of  Princeton  Dr.  A. 
J.  Gordon  might  have  warned  them  against  the  captivating 
assaults  of  sin  coming  in  like  captors  in  the  wooden  horse.  The 
Homeric  question  would  not,  thereby,  be  settled  or  even  raised 
to  consciousness  in  a  healthy  mind  (p.  417). 

I  think  that  a  moment's  reflection  will  show  that 
this  last  statement  would  or  would  not  be  true  accord- 
ing to  circumstances.  If  the  students  addressed  knew 
that  the  lecturer  disbelieved  the  story  of  the  wooden 
horse,  they  would,  of   course,  understand  him  as  not 


14  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

intending  to  affirm  its  truthfulness.  But  if  they  be- 
lieved the  story  themselves,  and  knew  nothing  of  his 
belief,  they  would  unquestionably  suppose  that  he  be- 
lieved as  they  did.  In  the  latter  case,  if  he  did  not 
wish  to  be  understood  as  indorsing  the  story,  fair  deal- 
ing with  his  hearers  would  demand  an  intimation  at 
least  of  his  real  opinion.  In  the  case  of  Jesus,  his 
hearers  believed  the  reality  of  the  story  of  Jonah,  and 
they  had  not  the  least  thought  that  Jesus  doubted  it  j 
when  then  he  said  that  Jonah  was  three  days  and  three 
nights  in  the  belly  of  the  fish,  they  could  not  doubt  that 
he  believed  it;  and  he  made  a  false  impression  if  he 
did  not. 

Next  we  take  Professor  Thayer's  statement : 

To  regard  our  Lord's  use  of  the  narrative  as  vouching  for  it 
as  history,  is  to  confound  the  province  and  function  of  a  preacher 
of  righteousness  with  that  of  a  higher  critic  or  of  a  scientific 
lecturer.  As  reasonably  might  one  infer  from  an  allusion  in  a 
modern  sermon  to  William  Tell,  or  EfRe  Deans,  or  the  Man 
Without  a  Country,  that  the  speaker  held  these  personages  to  be 
thoroughly  historic,  and  their  narrated  experiences  matters  of 
fact.  As  warrantably  might  we  make  Christ's  gratuitous  men- 
tion (only  three  verses  later)  of  evil  spirits  as  frequenting  water- 
less places,  the  basis  of  a  demonology  for  which  he  is  to  be  held 
res]  onsible  (418). 

As  to  William  Tell,  although  I  know  that  some 
critics  now  doubt  whether  he  ever  existed,  when  I  hear 
a  speaker  mention  something  that  he  did,  I  always  think 
that  he  believes  the  incident  which  he  mentions,  unless 
he  gives  some  intimation  to  the  contrary.  If  he  intro- 
duces it  as  something  that  is  said  to  have  been  done  by 
William  Tell,  I  understand  him  as  doubting  the  story. 
As  for  Effie  Deans,  and  the  Man  Without  a  Country,  I 
confess  myself  so  ignorant  of  them,  that  if  I  were  to 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  15 

hear  Professor  Thayer  in  sober  discourse  mention  some- 
thing that  either  of  them  did,  I  wwuld  suppose  that  he 
was  mentioning  a  real  transaction.  I  stand  with  refer- 
ence to  William  Tell  where  the  Jews  stood  with  refer- 
ence to  Jonah ;  and  with  reference  to  Effie  Deans  and 
the  Man  Without  a  Country,  I  stand  as  the  Jews  would 
have  stood  if  they  had  never  heard  of  Jonah.  J<  sus, 
then,  if  he  did  not  believe  the  story  of  Jonah,  would 
have  made  the  same  false  impression  on  the  Jews  as  the 
Professor  would  on  me  in  the  case  of  Effie  Deans. 

As  to  our  Lord's  remark  about  evil  spirits  frequenting 
waterless  places,  while  it  would  be  hazardous  to  make  it 
the  "  basis  of  a  demonology  for  which  he  is  to  be  held 
responsible,"  he  certainly  is  to  be  held  responsible  for 
the  remark  itself.  If  an  evil  spirit,  when  he  left  a 
man,  did  not  frequent  waterless  places,  I  should  be  glad 
to  learn  from  Professor  Thayer  what  kind  of  places  he 
did  frequent.  If  we  may  judge  by  those  that  went  into 
the  herd  of  swine,  the  evil  spirits  were  not  fond  of 
being  in  the  water;  and  even  before  they  went  out  of 
the  man  they  kept  him  among  the  tombs,  which  were 
certainly  waterless  places.  If,  then,  the  statement  about 
the  evil  spirit  is  to  be  taken  as  a  parallel  to  that  about 
Jonah,  we  should  conclude  that  the  latter  was  really 
three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  fish.  Moreover,  if 
Jesus  knew  the  mysterious  movements  of  disembodied 
spirits,  we  might  credit  him  with  knowing  something 
about  men  in  the  flesh  like  Jonah. 

Professor  Franklin  Johnson,  of  Chicago  University, 
makes  the  same  argument  with  different  illustrations: 

The  great  writers  and  orators  of  all  peoples  and  agps  have 
spoken  of  the  characters  of  fiction  as  if  they  were  real.  All 
competent  writers  and  orators  do  so  today.    Even  the  minister 


16  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

who  is  offended  with  these  lines  will  refer  in  next  Sunday'^ 
sermon  to  the  prodigal  son,  to  the  sower,  to  the  merchant 
se^  king  goodly  pearls,  without  telling  his  people  these  charact  rs 
are  not  historical.  He  will  refer  to  Mr.  Facing-both-ways,  to  Mr. 
F-  aring,  or  to  Christian  at  the  Wicket  Gate,  in  the  Slough  of 
Dt'tsp'.nd,  or  in  the  Vanity  Fair,  and  will  tell  what  they  did, 
with  no  thought  of  the  question  whether  his  statements  are 
derived  from  history  or  from  allegory.  1  could  show  by  many 
exaaiples  that  this  was  the  custom  of  the  writers  and  speakers 
of  antiquity.  In  fact,  one  of  these  examples  is  given  by  Christ 
himself.  After  relating  the  parable  of  the  Unjust  Judge,  he 
begins  his  comment  upon  it  with  a  sentence  such  as  he  would 
have  used  had  the  parable  been  history:  *'  Hear  what  the  unjust 
judge  t^aith"  (Luke  xviii.  6).  So  also  in  Jude  7, 14, 15,  the  lord's 
brother  refers  to  the  story  of  the  crime  of  the  angels  with  the 
women  of  the  world  before  the  flood,  without  raising  the  ques- 
tion of  its  historical  character,  and  quotes  from  the  Book  of 
Enoch,  as  we  quote  from  some  disputed  dialosjue  of  Plato,  with- 
out raising  the  question  of  its  genuineness  (418,  419). 

The  Professor  need  not  have  insisted  so  earnestly 
that  writers  and  orators  of  all  peoples  and  a^es  speak  oi 
the  characters  of  fiction  as  if  they  were  real ;  for  this  is 
not  denied  by  anybody.  The  question  at  issue  is  evaded 
by  all  such  remarks,  and  by  all  the  ill ustral ions  adduced 
in  their  support.  The  real  question  is,  whether,  in  the 
specific  reHiark  of  Christ  about  Jonah,  and  in  strictly 
parallel  remarks,  the  reality  of  the  alleged  experience  is 
affirmed.  This  depends  on  the  remark  itself,  and  on 
the  connection  in  which  it  occurs;  but  not  on  one  or  a 
thousand  remarks  of  a  different  nature  about  other 
matters.  Professor  Johnson  doubtless  thought,  when 
he  wrote  his  article,  that  his  examples  were  relevant  and 
conclusive.     Let  us  examine  them,  and  see. 

His  first  group  includes  three  characters  in  the 
Saviour's  parables ;  and  he  assumes  that  the  prodigal  sou, 
the  sower,  and  the  dealer  in  pearls  were  not  historical 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  17 

(characters.  How  does  he  know  that  they  were  not  ? 
Did  no  sower  ever  go  out  to  sow,  and  meet  with  the 
exact  (xp  rience  of  the  one  in  the  parable?  The  Pro- 
fessor mufet  know  that  this  was  the  experience  of  thou- 
sands of  sowers  in  Palestine  every  year;  and  that  it  is 
to  this  day.  Did  no  younger  son  ever  pass  through  the 
identical  experiences  of  the  prodigaP?  Who  can  say  no, 
when  thousands  of  them  are  now  passing  through  expe- 
riences almost  identical?  And  as  to  the  unjust  judge, 
tyrannical  governments  in  the  East  have  swarmtd  with 
such  in  all  ages,  and  no  man  can  safely  deny  that  one  of 
them  spoke  and  acted  precisely  as  Jesus  describes  him. 
The  second  group  of  examples,  taken  from  "Pilgrim's 
Progress,"  can  be  used  as  they  are  for  the  reason,  first, 
that  nearly  all  auditors  are  familiar  with  them  as  fictitious 
characters;  and  second,  because  their  very  names  are 
J-uirgestive  of  fiction,  and  would  be  so  understood  on 
hearing  them  the  first  time.  There  is  no  parallel  be- 
tween them  and  the  case  in  hand ;  for,  in  order  to  such 
a  parallel  the  hearers  of  Jesus  should  have  known  that 
Jonah  was  a  fictitious  character,  or  else  the  language  of 
J«  sus  should  have  been  suggestive  of  fiction.  In  the 
third  group,  taken  from  Jude,  the  Professor  assumes  as 
correct  an  interpretation  which  is  disputed  ;  and  even  so 
he  does  not  make  good  his  point.  The  great  majority 
of  scholars  deny  that  Jude  makes  any  allusion  to  crime 
committed  by  angels  with  women ;  and  if  it  can  be 
made  out  that  he  does,  then  it  will  still  be  necessary, 
bef  re  the  argument  is  made  good,  to  show  that  the  fact 
which  he  alludes  to  was  not  a  fact;  and  this  Professor 
Johnson  can  not  do.  He  can  make  it  appear  very  im- 
probable, but  further  than  this  he  can  not  go.  On  the 
contrary,  if  he  could  prove  that  Jude  asserts  that  this 


18  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

crime  was  ccmmitted,  he  would  thereby  prove  to  most 
men  that  it  really  was.  The  case  would  then  be  like 
that  of  Jesus  and  Jonah.  As  to  tlie  Book  of  Enoch, 
Jude  makes  no  statement  on  its  authority.  He  makes 
a  statement  about  Enoch  which  is  also  found  substan- 
tially in  that  book  ;  but  he  states  it  as  a  fact  without 
referring  to  his  source  of  knowledge,  and  nearly  all 
men,  since  his  epistle  was  written,  have  received  it  as  a 
fact;  so  that,  if  it  is  not  a  fact,  Jude  has  deceived  them. 
This  is  a  true  parallel  to  the  remark  of  Jesus  about 
Jonah  ;  for  in  both  instances  a  fact  is  asserted,  and  men 
in  general  have  believed  the  fact  because  of  these  asser- 
tions. Careful  and  elaborate,  therefore,  as  is  the  argu- 
ment of  Professor  Johnson,  it  is  a  failure. 

Professor  Hyde,  the  writer  who  thinks  that  the  passage 
under  consideration  may  mean  "any  one  of  ten  tliou- 
sands  things  to  as  many  readers,"  and  that  "  precisely 
what  Jesus  meant  by  it  we  shall  never  know,"  follows 
the  same  line  of  argument,  and  expresses  himself  thus : 

As  to  Jesus'  use  of  the  Old  Testament,  it  seems  to  me  that 
he  used  it  just  as  we  use  Bunyan  or  Shakespeare — witliout 
concerning  himself  one  way  or  the  other  about  its  histori- 
city or  literary  form  or  authorship,  or  date  of  composition,  and 
assuming  that  his  immediate  hearers  would  have  sufiicient  com- 
mon sense  to  take  his  words  as  he  meant  them.  To  tie  him 
down  to  a  belief  in  the  historical  character  of  the  story  of 
Jonah  is  as  absurd  as  it  would  be  to  make  every  man  who  evei 
referred  to  the  Slough  of  Despond  a  believer  in  the  geographical 
reality  of  such  a  place  (419,  420). 

If  Jesus  used  the  Old  Testament  as  we  use  Bunyan 
and  Shakespeare,  he  used  it  as  an  allegory  or  a  poem, 
and  in  no  sense,  as  history.  It  is  astonishing  that  a  sane 
man  can  so  assert  or  believe.  But  perhaps  the  Profis- 
sor   intended   to   qualify  the   statement    by  the   words, 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  19 

^^without  concerning  himself  one  way  or  the  other  about 
its  historicity  or  literary  form  or  authorship,  or  date  of 
composition/'  But  if  he  used  it  without  concerning 
him-elf  ahout  its  historicity  or  its  authorship,  he  did 
not  use  it  as  we  use  Bunyan  and  Shakespeare.  Who 
quotes  either  of  these  authors  without  concerning  him- 
self about  their  historicity?  The  man  who  would  use 
Anthony's  oration  over  Caesar's  dead  body,  or  Chris- 
tian's struggle  through  the  Slough  of  Despond,  as  a 
piece  of  history,  would  be  set  down  as  an  ignoramus  or 
deceiver;  and  the  man  who  would  quote  Shakespeare  in 
the  name  of  Milton,  or  Bunyan  in  the  name  of  Ben  Jon- 
son,  would  reap  the  same  reward.  We  do  not  then  use 
these  two  works,  or  any  other  works,  without  concern- 
ing ourselves  about  their  historicity  or  their  authorship ; 
and  the  same  is  true  of  Jesus  in  his  dealings  with  the 
Old  Testament.  The  Professor's  citation  of  the  Slough 
of  Despond  is  wide  of  the  mark;  for  the  only  reason 
why  a  public  speaker  can  now  refer  to  that  without 
misleading  his  hearers  into  the  belief  of  its  reality,  is 
that  his  hearers  already  know  it  to  be  an  imaginary 
slough.  If  the  hearers  of  Jesus  had  so  understood  the 
story  of  Jonah,  the  cases  would  be  parallel ;  but  it  is 
notorious,  and  it  is  freely  admitted  that  they  understood 
the  story  to  be  true,  and  when,  therefore,  Jesus  spoke  of 
it  as  a  true  story  he  deceived  them  if  it  was  not.  This 
point,  let  me  say  with  emphasis,  is  totally  ignored  by 
all  the  writers  on  the  side  with  these  eight.  Why  so  ? 
Is  it  because  they  are  too  dull  to  see  that  such  a  point 
can  be  made  in  answer  to  them?  I  can  not  think  so. 
Why,  then,  do  they  ignore  it?  I  should  be  glad  to 
know.  I  hope  I  shall  obtain  from  some  of  them  an 
answer. 


^0  JESUiS  AND  JO^AH. 

The  fifth  writer  in  the  fyraposiura  is  Philip  S. 
Moxom,  of  Springfield,  Mass.  As  he  denies  the  genu- 
ineness of  the  passage  under  consideration,  he  baves 
himself  the  necessity  of  trying  to  prove  that  the  remark 
of  Jesus  about  Jonah  does  not  imply  the  reality  cf 
J- >nuh's  experience;  we  therefore  pass  (tn  to  the  sixt'i 
writer,  w^ho  is  Professor  Rliees,  of  Newton  Theological 
lustituiion.     He  says  : 

It  is  evident  that  in  Jesus'  words  the  story  of  Jonah  is 
treated  as  hi.storical.  The  contemporaries  of  Jesus  held  it  to  be 
sober  history.  And  Jonali  is  appealed  to  in  the  same  way  hs 
Abraham  and  David  are  referred  to  in  the  New  Testament.  It 
is  to  be  noticed,  however,  that  the  reference  is  only  by  way  of 
illustration.  And  consequently  it  may  not  be  said  that  the 
validity  of  the  illustration  passes,  if  the  story  is  found  to  be 
allegory  and  not  fullest  history.  So  long  as  it  served  to  suggest 
to  the  hearers  of  Jesus  the  thought  of  his  vindication  by  a 
miraculous  deliverance,  the  story  would  be  an  apt  illustration. 
And  we  need  not  doubt  that  our  Lord  would  use  it  without  rais- 
ing the  question  of  its  historicity  (425,  426). 

This  writer,  like  all  the  others,  evades  the  real  issue 
and  raises  another.  The  question  is  not,  whether  an 
illustration  drawn  from  a  supposed  fact  would  be  invali- 
dated by  the  discovery  that  tlie  account  of  the  fact  is 
allegorical ;  but  whether  the  particular  use  that  Jesus 
made  of  the  story  of  Jonah  implies  that  Jonah  was  in 
the  fish.  Wh  n  Prof.  Rhees  says,  at  the  beginning  of 
the  extract  just  made,  that  in  the  words  of  Jesus  the 
story  of  Jonah  is  treated  as  historical,  and  adds  that  the 
contemporaries  of  Jesus  held  it  to  be  sober  history,  he 
cuts  himself  off  from  all  escape  in  the  direction  in  which 
he  seeks  it;  for  if  Jesus  treated  the  story  as  historical 
in  speaking  to  men  who  held  it  to  be  so,  then  he  was 
either  mistaken    about   it   himself,   or  he  deceived    his 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  21 

hearers.  There  'a  no  possible  escape  from  this  alter- 
native. 

To  say  that  the  reference  to  Jonah  is  "  only  by  way 
of  illustration,"  betrays  still  greater  confuriion  of 
thought.  What  was  he  aiming  to  illustrate?  Let  us 
try  a  strictly  parallel  remark  :  "As  in  Adam  all  die,  so 
also  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive."  Is  this  an  illus- 
tration? To  ask  the  question  is  to  answer  it.  Instead 
of  being  an  illustration,  it  is  the  prediction  of  a  future 
fact  and  the  declaration  that  it  will  be  as  uni- 
versal as  a  well-known  fact  in  the  past.  The  un- 
doubted reality  of  the  past  fact  is  what  gives  force 
to  the  assertion  respecting  the  future  one.  It  a 
man  could  answer  Paul  by  saying,  Very  well;  all 
did  not  die  in  Adam  ;  he  could  add,  Then  all,  according 
to  >our  own  showing,  will  not  be  made  alive  in  Christ. 
So  in  the  present  instance.  If  the  Pharisees  could  have 
answered  Je.-us,  as  these  critics  now  do,  by  saying.  Very 
well,  Master  ;  Jonah  was  not  in  the  bowels  of  the  fish  ; 
they  could  have  added,  Therefore,  according  to  your 
own  showing,  you  will  not  be  in  the  heart  of  the  earth. 
Instead  of  being  an  illustration  of  something — and  Pro- 
fessor Rhees  does  not  attempt  to  tell  us  of  what — the 
remark  was  a  solemn  prediction  of  a  fact  yet  to  be, 
which  should  be  analogous  to  one  that  certainly  had  been. 

But  Professor  Rhees,  like  all  the  others  of  the  sym- 
posium, presents  a  supposed  parallel  to  the  remark  in 
question,  by  which  he  attempts  to  sustain  his  interpre- 
tation.     He  says  : 

It  is  not  generally  held  that  by  his  words  in  the  parable  of 
the  rich  man  and  Lrizarus,  Jesnshas  given  sanction  to  the  feature 
of  Jewish  eschatology  which  pictured  the  blessed  dead,  in  wait- 
ing for  the  resurrection,  as  reclining  in  Abraham's  bosom.  It  is  no 


22  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

more  necessary  to  hold  that  he  has  here  sanctioned  any  particu- 
lar conclusion  concerning  the  nature  of  the  narrative  in  the 
Book  of  Jonah  (426). 

If  there  was  any  such  "  feature  of  Jewish  eschatol- 
ogy  "  as  is  here  intimated,  I  am  sure  Jesus  never  uttered 
a  word  to  give  sanction  to  it.  It  would  have  been  too 
foolish  a  "  feature  '^  for  any  thoughtful  man  to  sanction  ; 
for  how  could  all  the  millions  of  the  ^^  blessed  dead'' 
recline  in  the  bosom  of  a  single  man  ?  This  "  feature  '^ 
would  require  Abraham  to  have  an  enormous  bosom. 
It  was  a  kindred  thought,  perhaps,  which  caused  the 
men  who  constructed  the  grave  of  Noah,  which  is 
pointed  out  to  the  traveler  in  Palestine,  to  make  it 
ninety  feet  long.  No,  Professor;  Jesus  did  not  sanction 
so  absurd  a  '^  feature  ";  but  he  did  say  that  angels  bore 
Lazarus  into  Abraham's  bosom ;  and  I  do  n't  know  any 
more  comfortable  place  to  which  they  could  have  borne 
him.  There  was  room  enough  for  him  in  the  bosom  of 
the  patriarch,  and  if  Professor  Rhees  does  not  believe 
that  he  was  really  borne  thither,  will  he  please  to  tell  us 
whither  he  was  borne?  I  know  so  little  about  that 
region  myself,  that  I  can  take  Jesus  at  his  word  when 
he  speaks  of  it.  If  I  reject  his  word  about  it,  to  whom 
shall  I  go  ? 

The  next  writer,  Amory  H.  Bradford,  expresses 
himself  very  briefly  and  very  clearly.     He  says  : 

I 

'        If  the  Book  of  Jonah   was  known  by  the  Master  to  be  a 

parable  written  for  the  purpose  of  conveying  a  great  moral  les- 
son, he  might  have  referred  to  it  in  the  language  here  used.  He 
would  not  have  conveyed  a  false  impression,  since  his  hearers 
would  have  understood  his  reference  (427). 

j  This  last  remark  shows  that  Mr.  Bradford  has 
caught  one  idea  which  the  other   writers  have  missed. 


A  S  YMF  OSI UM  HE  VIE  WED.  23 

He  sees  that,  in  order  to  avoid  making  a  false  impres- 
sion by  reterring  to  an  imaginary  fact  as  if  it  were  real> 
the  hearers  as  well  as  the  speaker  must  understand  the 
reference.  But  while  he  is  undoubtedly  correct  in  this 
he  forgets  that  if  Jesus  made  such  a  reference  as  this,  his 
hearers  did  not  understand  the  reference,  for  it  is  admitted 
on  all  hands  that  the  Jews  understood  the  story  of  Jonah 
to  be  sober  history ;  and  if  Jesus  did  not  so  understand 
it,  then,  according  to  Mr.  Bradford's  own  showing,  he 
made  a  false  impression.  This  writer  has  stumbled  on 
the  truth  at  one  point,  only  to  stumble  over  it  at  an- 
other. 

Like  the  others,  this  writer  finds  a  parallel,  as  he 
suj)poses,  in  an  admissible  use  of  fictitious  characters, 
and  his  chosen  example  is  taken  from  the  novel,  "  Les 
Miserables  '^ 

Preachers  not  infrequently  refer  to  the  good  bishop  in  "  Les 
Miserables"  as  if  he  were  a  historical  person;  but  because 
Canon  Stubbs  speaks  of  that  story  as  if  it  were  true,  no  one 
thinks  that  he  means  to  be  so  understood,  and  if  it  is  not  true  he 
can  never  be  trusted  again.  He  took  it  for  granted  that  his 
hearers  understoc  d  him  and  did  not  need  to  qualify  his  state- 
ment. It  is  quite  conceivable  that  our  Lord  spoke  in  the  same 
way  (427). 

Very  well ;  Canon  Stubbs  took  it  for  granted  that 
his  hearers  understood  him  as  not  affirming  the  truth  of 
the  story  of  the  bishop,  but  in  the  case  of  Jesus  the 
reverse  was  true ;  so  the  cases  are  not  parallel.  If 
Canon  Stubbs  would  have  misled  his  hearers,  had  they 
not  understood  him  as  they  did,  then  Jesus  misled  his 
hearers  if  he  understood  the  story  of  Jonah  to  be 
fictitious.  Mr.  Bradford  must  wipe  out  all  that  he  has 
written  in  this  symposium,  and  make  a  new  start  from 


24  JESUS  AMJ  JONAH. 

a    different    point   of    view,    if    he    is  to  maintain    his 
cont«  ntion. 

Near  the  close  of  his  brief  article,  Mr.  Bradford 
takes  another  turn  in  his  effort  to  get  rid  of  the  natural 
view  of  the  case.     He  says : 

He  was  not  asked  about  the  story  ;  he  was  asked  for  a  sign, 
and  his  reference  to  Jonah  was  incidental,  and  used  because  it 
would  be  easily  understood  by  those  whom  he  addressed  (428). 

Yes;  ''easily  understood  by  those  wl  om  he  ad- 
dressed"; and  understood,  as  we  have  again  and  again 
reiterated,  as  a  real  event.  Being  so  understood  ly 
them,  we  ask  again,  How  can  Jesus  be  relieved  of  the 
charge  of  duplicity  if  he  knew  that  the  event  was  not 
real,  and  yet  used  it  to  confirm  their  impression  that  it 
was?  Again  I  demand  that  some  of  the  critics  shall 
answer  this  question. 

As  Professor  Ropes,  the  last  of  the  ei^ht,  denies  t^  at 
Jesus  knew  any  more  about  the  Book  of  Jonah  than  did 
his  contemporaries,  he,  of  course,  is  freed  from  the 
necessity  of  explaining  how  he  could  consistently  refer 
to  the  incident  of  the  fish  as  a  reality  when  it  was  not. 
He  did  so,  according  to  this  Professor,  because  he  knew 
no  better  than  to  believe  the  story. 

We  now  come  to  the  comments  made  on  this  s^  mpo- 
t«ium  by  the  associate  editor  of  the  Biblical  World,  Pro- 
fessor Shailer  Mathews.  He  states  the  common  belief 
of  the  eight  writers  in  these  words : 

Christ's  use  of  the  experience  of  Jonah,  as  an  illustration,  in 
no  way  gives  his  sanction  to  the  view  that  the  Book  of  Jonah  is 
history. 

In  this  attempt  to  represent  the  common  belief  of 
the  writers,  the  editor  has  drawn  u23on  his  imagination 


A  SYMPOSIUM  REVIEWED.  25 

rather  than  upon  the  articles  of  the  writers;  fur  only 
one  of  them  says  that  Jesus  used  the  experience  of 
Jonah  as  an  illustration;  and  I  have  showed  very 
plainly,  I  think,  that  he  did  not  so  use  it. 

These   writers  all   feel,  at   hast  those  of  them  who 
credit  Jesus  with  knowing  the  facts  about  Jonah,  that 
the  only  way  to  defend  their  position  is  to  find,  eith«  r 
in  the  lips  of  Jesus  himself,  or   in  those  of  some  other 
approved   speaker,   a   parallel   statement  in    which    the 
reality  of  the  past  fact  referred  to  is  not  implied.     They 
have  ransacked  the  writings  of  Shakespeare,  of  Bunyan, 
of  the  popular  novelists,  and  the   parables  of  Jesus,  to 
find  one,  and  they  have  brought  forth  many ;  but  every 
one  of  them  fails,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  essential  point 
of  comparison      Let  them   find,   if  they   can,  a  single 
instance   in   which   Jesus   mentioned   something   in   the 
past   which   his  hearers  believed  to  be  a  fact,  but  which 
he  ceitainly  knew  to   be  not  a  fact,  and  then  compared 
with  this  some  event  yet  in  the  future.     I  have  givin 
one  allusion  that  is  parallel,  the  saying  of  Paul,  ''As  in 
Adam  all  die,  so  in  Christ  shall  all  be  made  alive";  but 
the  allusion  is   to  a  real  past   event.     Here  is  another 
example:  ''This  Jesus,  who  was  received  up  from  you 
into  heaven,  shall  so  come  in  like  manner  as  ye  beheld 
him   going  into   heaven  "   (Acts  i.  11).     Here  the  past 
event,  his  going  into  heaven,  was  a  real  one.     Again  : 
''As  therefore  the  tares  are  gathered  up  and  burned  with 
fire,  so  shall  it  be  in  the  end  of  the  world.     The  Son  of 
man  shall   send  forth  his  angels,  and  they  shall  gather 
out  of  his  kingdom  all  things  that  cause  stumbling,  and 
them  that  do  iniquity,  and  shall  cast  them  into  the  fur- 
nace of  fire"   (Matt.   xiii.  40,41).     Here  is  a  strictly 
parallel   case,   and  the    past    event,   the    gathering    and 


26  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

burning  of  the  tares,  is  strictly  historical.  *'As  Moses 
lifted  up  the  serpent  in  the  wilderness,  so  the  Son  of 
man  must  be  lifted  up''  (John  iii.  14).  Again:  "As  it 
came  to  pass  in  the  days  of  Noah,  even  so  shall  it  be 
also  in  the  days  of  the  Son  of  man''  (Luke  xvii.  26). 
I  know  not  how  many  more  instances  of  the  same  con- 
struciion  can  be  found,  for  I  have  mentioned  these  only 
from  memory ;  but  let  the  critics  find  at  least  one  such 
in  which  the  past  event,  though  spoken  of  as  a  reality, 
and  believed  by  the  hearer  to  be  a  reality,  was  known  by 
Jesus  to  be  a  fiction.  Then,  and  not  till  then,  may  they 
claim  that  the  s'ory  of  Jonah  may  also  be  a  fiction,  not- 
withstanding the  use  Jesus  makes  of  it.  If  he  had  said, 
As  the  trees  went  forth  once  to  choose  for  themselves  a 
king,  so  shall  something  else  yet  take  place;  and  had 
the  Jews  believed  that  Jothan's  fable  was  a  pioce  of 
hi>tory,  this  would  be  such  an  example  as  the  critics  are 
searching  for.  Again,  I  say,  let  them  find  such  an  ex- 
ample, and  cease  their  endless  production  of  parallels 
that  are  not  parallels.  I  am  neither  a  prophet,  nor  the 
son  of  a  prophet,  but  I  stake  my  reputation  as  a  man 
of  some  knowledge  of  the  subject  on  the  assertion  that 
the  example  demanded  will  never  be  found. 


II.  PROF.  DRIVER  ON  THE  BOOK  OF  JONAH. 

I  propose  next  to  review  the  new  criiical  theory  as 
to  the  origin  and  character  of  the  Book  of  Jonah.  I 
select,  as  representing  most  fairly  that  theory,  what  Pro- 
fessor Driver  says  in  his  "  Introduction  to  the  Literature 
of  the  Old  Testament.'' 

No  author  wliom  I  have  read  has  a  better  conception 
of  the  design  of  the  book  ;  for  as  an  exegete,  Professor 
Driver  has  few  superiors;  but  on  the  question  of  his- 
toricity he  stands  with  the  scholars  whose  symposium  I 
have  reviewed,  and  he  assigns  to  the  book  a  date  so  late 
as  to  render  its  historicity  a  matter  of  impossibility, 
unless  its  author  was  miraculously  inspired  to  know  the 
history,  which  he  tacitly  denies. 

I  will  state  his  position  in  his  own  words,  and  then 
consider  seriatim  the  reasons  by  which  he  supports  it. 
He  says: 

On  the  historical  character  of  the  narrative  opinions  have 
differed  widely.  Quite  irrespectively  of  the  miraculous  features- 
in  the  narrative,  it  must  be  admitted  that  there  are  indications 
that  it  is  not  strictly  historical. 

The  first  of  these  "  indications ''  which  he  mentions 

is  set  forth  as  follows : 

The  sudden  conversion,  on  such  a  large  scale  as  (without 
pressing  single  expressions)  is  evidently  implied,  of  a  great 
heathen  population,  is  contrary  to  analogy ;  nor  is  it  easy  to  im- 
agine a  monarch  of  the  type  depicted  in  the  Assyrian  inscriptions 
behaving  as  the  king  of  Nineveh  is  represented  as  acting  in  the 
presence  of  the  Hebrew  prophet  (p.  303). 


28  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

According  to  this  mode  of  reasoning,  an  account  of 
any  sudden  change  in  a  great  population,  which  is 
''contrary  to  ana'ogy/'  is  to  be  regarded  as  self- evidently 
unhistorical ;  and  if  one  in  a  succession  of  kings  is  rep- 
resented as  acting  a  much  humbler  part  than  the  others, 
it  is  difficult  to  imagine  that  the  representation  is  true. 
I  wonder,  then,  what  Professor  Driver  thinks  of  the 
statement,  contrary  to  all  analogy,  that  three  thousand 
persons  were  converted  to  Christ  by  a  single  discourse 
of  Peter  on  the  great  Pentecost?  And  what  does  he 
tliink  of  the  account  of  Sergius  Paulus,  who  is  said, 
contrary  to  the  analogy  of  Roman  Proconsuls,  to  have 
suddenly  believed  in  Jesus  after  a  brief  interview  with 
Paul  and  Barnabas?  Wliat  does  he  think  of  the  great 
waves  of  religious  revolution,  quite  similar  to  that  on 
Pentecost,  which  have  often  characterized  modern  revi- 
vals in  both  Christian  and  heathen  lands?  Such  reason- 
ing would  destroy  all  faith  in  the  most  striking  events 
of  history.  But  the  criti'S  of  this  new  school,  like  the 
avowed  enemies  of  the  Bible,  never  reason  thus  except 
when  they  are  seeking  to  set  aside  the  historicity  of 
some  Bible  narrative.  Their  antipithy  to  the  belief  of 
events  that  are  contrary  to  analogy  seem  limited  to 
Biblical  events. 

The  author's  second  reason  is  given  in  these  words : 

It  is  remarkable,  al^o,  that  the  conversion  of  Nineveh,  if  it 
took  place  upon  the  scale  described  should  have  produced  so 
little  permanent  effect;  for  the  Assyrians  are  uniformly  repre- 
sented in  the  Old  Testament  as  idolaters. 

Is  it  not  equally  remarkable  that  the  frequent  con- 
versions of  Israel  under  the  Judges  should  have  had  so 
little  permanent  eifect?     That  the  conversion  of  Judah 


PROF.  DRIVER  ON  JONAH.  29 

under  Ilczekiah  should  have  had  so  little  pprmanent 
eifect  as  to  be  followed  immediately  by  the  abominable 
idolatries  of  Manasseh's  reign?  Paul  marvele<l  that  the 
Galatians  had  so  soon  turned  away  from  him  who  called 
them,  to  another  gospel — a  backward  revolution  in  less 
than  three  years;  yet,  all  these  things,  remarkable  as 
as  they  were,  actually  took  place.  Is  an  account  of 
something  "remarkable''  to  be  understood  as  indicating 
that  the  book  containing  it  is  not  historical?  If  so,  we 
must  scout  all  history  except  that  of  the  most  common- 
place character.  The  school  to  which  Professor  Driver 
belongs  deals  thus,  I  say  again,  only  with  the  narratives 
of  the  Bible.  And  this  mode  of  treatment  is  in  the 
present  instance  the  more  remarkable  from  the  consider- 
ation that,  although  it  is  true  that  the  Nine  vites  are 
represented  in  the  Old  Testament,  when  their  religion  is 
mentioned  at  all,  as  idolaters,  they  are  not  mentioned 
afttr  the  visit  of  Jonah  till  the  reign  of  Pul,  King  of 
Assyria,  who  made  a  friendly  alliance  with  Menahem,  of 
Israel.  Now  Menahem  came  to  the  throne  two  years 
after  the  death  of  Jeroboam,  and  he  had  been  reigning 
some  years  when  Pul  marched  across  the  Euphrates; 
and  if  the  visit  of  Jonah  to  Nineveh  occurred  i^ome 
years  before  the  death  of  Jeroboam,  then  we  have  a 
lapse  of  from  five  or  six  to  a  dozen  or  more  years  bef  »re 
Nineveh  is  mentioned  again;  and  even  then  it  is  only 
her  king  who  is  mentioned,  without  a  word  as  to  the 
religious  condition  of  her  people.  Now  if  Jonah  did 
not  believe  that  the  repentance  of  the  Ninevites  would 
last  through  forty  days,  should  it  be  considered  very 
"remarkable''  that  we  have  no  trace  of  it  after  a  few 
years  ? 


30  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

The  third  reason  given  by  Professor  Driver  is  more 
remarkable  still.     It  is  this: 

But  in  fact  the  structure  of  the  narrative  shows  that  the 
didactic  purpose  of  the  book  is  the  author's  chief  aim.  He  intro- 
duces just  those  details  that  have  a  bearing  upon  this,  while 
omitting  others  which,  had  his  interest  been  in  the  history  as 
such,  might  naturally  have  been  mentioned;  e.  g.,  details  as  to 
the  spot  at  w^hich  Jonah  was  cast  on  the  island,  and  particulars 
as  to  the  special  sins  of  which  the  Ninevites  were  guilty. 

I  wonder  what  man  of  sense  ever  attempted  to  write 
history  with  an  "  interest  in  the  history  as  such/'  and 
without  a  didactic  aim  as  his  chief  purpose  in  writing. 
Surely,  no  such  historical  writing  can  be  found  in  the 
Bible.  Even  the  four  Gospels,  though  devoted  to  the 
most  deeply  interesting  historical  events  that  ever  trans- 
pired on  this  old  earth,  had  a  didactic  purpose  as  their 
chief  aim — the  purpose,  as  John  expresses  it,  of  causing 
the  readers  to  believe  that  Jesus  is  the  Christ,  the  Son  of 
the  living  God,  and  that  believing  they  might  obtain 
life  through  his  name.  History  is  said  to  be  philosophy 
teaching  by  example;  and  if  a  narrative  teaches  noth- 
ing, if  it  has  not  a  didactic  purpose  as  its  chief  aim,  then 
it  is  not  history  according  to  the  accepted  definition. 
And  what  wonderful  omissions  the  author  of  the  Book 
of  Jonah  was  led  to  make  by  his  didactic  purpose !  He 
failed  to  tell  the  exact  spot  where  Jonah  was  thrown 
up;  and  what  a  loss  to  the  modern  tourist!  I  wonder 
if  Jonah  himself  knew  where  he  was  thrown  up.  I 
wonder  if  he  ever  went  back  and  tried  to  identify  it. 
Surely,  for  the  benefit  of  modern  critics,  he  ought  to 
have  driven  a  stake  there,  or  built  a  heap  of  stones ;  for 
why  should  the  world  be  deprived  of  information  so 
necessary  to  its  spiritual  welfare?  And  then,  he  omitted 
to  mention  the  special  sins  of  which  the  Ninevites  were 


PROF.  DRIVER  ON  JONAH.  31 

guilty !  True,  everybody  knew  them,  and  every  intelli- 
gent person  knows  now  the  sins  to  which  idolatrous 
cities  have  been  most  addicted  ;  but  surely,  if  the  author 
of  Jonah  had  been  a  modern  critic  of  the  school  of 
Driver,  he  would  not  have  been  so  absorbed  in  his 
didactic  purpose  as  to  omit  this  needed  information ! 

After  giving  all  these  reasons  for  believing  that  the 
narrative  in  question  is  not  "  strictly  historical,"  the 
author,  on  the  same  page,  and  in  the  very  next  para- 
graph, makes  the  following  statement : 

No  doubt  the  materials  of  the  narrative  were  supplied  to  the 
author  by  tradition,  and  rest  ultimately  upon  a  basis  of  fact ;  no 
doubt  the  outlines  of  the  narrative  are  historical,  and  Jonah's 
preaching  was  actually  successful  at  Nineveh  (Luke  xi.  30-32), 
though  not  upon  the  scale  represented  in  the  book. 

"  No  doubt  "  on  the  points  here  mentioned  ?  "  No 
doubt"  that  the  narrative  rests  upon  a  basis  of 
fact  ?  "  No  doubt "  that  the  outlines  of  the  narrative 
are  historical?  "No  doubt"  that  Jonah's  preaching 
was  actually  successful  at  Nineveh?  Why  no  doubt  on 
these  points,  when  everything  else  in  the  book  is 
doubted  or  denied  ?  If  the  author  invented  the  fish 
story,  and  the  gourd  story,  and  the  universal  repent- 
ance of  the  Ninevites,  why  is  there  no  doubt  that  he 
told  the  truth  about  the  other  details?  There  is  noth- 
ing in  the  book  itself  to  indicate  such  a  difference,  and 
there  is  nothing  in  contemporary  history.  Where,  then, 
does  Professor  Driver  obtain  the  conviction,  free  from 
all  doubt,  that  so  much  of  the  story  is  true  ?  The  only 
clue  that  he  gives  us  in  his  very  quiet  citation  of  Luke 
xi.  30-32.  And  what  is  found  there?  Why,  those 
very  statements  of  Jesus  which  the  eight  scholars  in 
our  symposium   will  not  allow  to  have  any  bearing  on 


32  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

the  historical  cha'acter  of  the  Book  of  Jonah.  We 
ther<'  find  the  vvord-j,  "  For  even  as  Jonah  was  a  sign  to 
th.  Ninf'vites,  so  shall  also  the  Son  of  man  be  to  this 
generation."  ^^  The  men  of  Nineveh  shall  stand  u{)  in 
the  judgment  with  this  generation,  and  shall  condemn 
it :  for  they  rep  nted  at  the  preaching  of  Jonah  ;  and 
behold,  a  greater  than  Jonah  is  here.''  Professor 
Driver,  then,  stands  against  our  chosen  eight  on  this 
j)oint;  for  he  affirms  what  they  deny,  that  the  statement 
of  Jesus  proves  the  historicity  of  the  Book  of  Jonah  in 
the  particulars  mentioned,  that  is,  his  being  a  sign  to 
the  Ninevites,  and  the  repentance  of  the  latter  under  his 
preaching.  With  h'm  there  is  "no  doubf  on  th^se 
points.  But  right  here  there  springs  up  a  very  serious 
quesiion,  to  which  Professor  Driver  ought  to  give  a  very 
serious  answer.  If  the  words  of  Jesus,  to  which  he 
refers,  prove  that  the  narrative  of  Jonah  rests  "ulti- 
mately upon  a  basis  of  fact'';  that  the  outlines  of  the 
narrative  are  historical,  and  that  the  Ninevites  did 
actually  repent,  why  does  not  his  expl  cit  declaration 
that  "Jonah  was  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the 
bowels  of  the  sea  monster"  prove  that  this  also  is  his- 
torical? I  am  afraid,  afier  all,  that  the  ultimate  reason 
for  denying  the  credibilit}^  of  the  narrative  is  that  which 
is  the  avowed  reason  of  unbelievers — an  unwillingne-s 
t )  accept  the  miraculous  in  the  story — and  this  is  the 
very  essence  of  skepticism.  That  the  kind  of  criticism 
in  which  Professor  Driver  and  all  belonging  to  the 
same  school  indu'ge,  is  incipient  unbelief,  becomes  more 
and  more  apparent  the  more  closely  it  is  scrutinized,  and 
the  further  its  development  progresses. 

Further  on  I  propose  to   review   Professor  Driver's 
evidence  for  the  late  date  of  the  Book  of  Jonah ;  but 


PROF.  DRIVER  ON  JONAH.  33 

under  that  heading  he  has  an  argument  which  more 
properly  belongs  to  the  subject  now  before  me,  and  I 
will  notice  it  here.     It  is  expressed  thus  : 

The  non-mention  of  the  name  of  the  king  of  Nineveh,  who 
plays  such  a  prominent  part  in  chapter  three,  may  be  taken  as 
an  indication  that  it  was  not  known  to  the  author  of  the  book 
(p.  301). 

If  the  name  of  the  king  was  not  known  to  the 
author  of  the  book,  then,  of  course,  the  author  was  not 
Jonah ;  neither  was  he  one  who  had  obtained  full  infor- 
mation from  Jonah  ;  but  is  the  book,  therefore,  unhis- 
torical?  I  can  imagine  an  author  who  had  learned 
correctly  every  detail  except  the  king's  name.  It  seems 
to  me  that  the  "  non-mention ''  of  the  king's  name  has 
no  bearing  on  the  question  either  way ;  for  if  Jonah 
wrote  it,  his  didactic  purpose  depended  upon  the  repent- 
ance of  the  king,  and  not  upon  his  name;  and  if  a 
romancer  of  the  fifth  century  b.  c.  wrote  it,  he  could 
just  as  easily  have  invented  the  name  of  the  king  as  to 
have  invented,  as  he  is  supposed  to  have  done,  the  story 
of  the  fish  and  that  of  the  gourd  vine.  The  Book  of 
Judith  is  a  romance  of  about  the  character  ascribed  by 
our  critics  to  the  Book  of  Jonah ;  and  the  author  of  it 
does  not  hesitate  to  give  the  name  of  the  imaginary 
Holofernes,  whose  imaginary  head  the  imaginary  Judith 
cut  off;  then  why  should  the  author  of  the  Book  of 
Jonah,  while  manufacturing  much  of  the  story,  have 
hesitated  to  put  in  the  name  of  the  king,  whether  he 
knew  it  or  not? 

It  is  the  custom  of  destructive  critics  to  assign  dates 
to  the  historical  books  of  the  Bible  so  far  this  side  of 
the  events  as  to  render  it  impossible  for  their  authors  to 
have  had  accurate  information.     This  they  have   done, 


.34  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

'not  only  with  Old  Testament  books,  but  with  the  Gos- 
pels and  Acts ;  and  this  they  have  done  with  the  Book 
of  Jonah.  Following  their  lead,  Professor  Driver  and 
the  less  destructive  school  to  which  he  belongs,  have 
selected  the  fifth  century  b.  c.  as  the  date  of  this  book ; 
and  as  Jonah  lived  near  the  close  of  the  ninth  century,  this 
leaves  an  interval  of  nearly  four  hundred  years  between 
the  composition  of  the  book  and  the  events  of  his  life. 
This  would  make  no  difference  in  case  of  the  real  inspira- 
tion of  the  author  ;  but  these  critics  grant  to  B  ble  writers 
no  inspiration  which  could  bring  to  tiieir  knowledge 
forgotten  facts  of  the  jia'^t,  or  that  could  guard  them 
against  errors  in  recording  facts.  So  then  it  becomes  us 
to  examine  the  grounds  on  which  so  late  a  date  is  assigned 
to  this  book. 

The  first  evidence  given  by  Driver  is  based  upon  the 
alleged  use  by  the  author  of  Aramaic  words  and  forms, 
which  did  not  come  into  use  until  the  Babylonian  cap- 
tivity. After  saying  that  the  book  can  not  have  been 
written  till  long  after  the  lifetime  of  Jonah  himself,  he 
adds:  "This  appears,  (1)  from  the  style,  which  has 
several  Aramaisms,  or  other  marks  of  a  late  age ;"  and 
he  proceeds  to  specify  a  half  dozen  such  words.  I  will 
not  copy  these  and  comment  on  them,  se(  ing  that  the 
author  himself  almost  immediately  admits  that  there  is 
nothing  conclusive  in  the  evidence. 

He  says  in  the  next  paragraph : 

Some  of  the  linguistic  features  might  (possibly)  be  consistent 
with  a  preexilic  origin  in  Northern  Israel  (though  they  are  more 
pronounced  than  those  referred  to  page  177n)  ;  but  taken  as  a 
whole,  they  are  more  naturally  explained  by  the  supposition 
that  the  book  is  a  work  of  the  post-exilic  period,  to  which  other 
considerations  point  with  some  cogency. 


PROF.  DRIVER  ON  JONAH.  35 

This  is  what  a  musician  would  style  playing  diminvr 
endo.  The  confident  assertion  that  the  writing  "has 
several  Aramaisms,"  is  followed  by  the  admission  that 
these  may  possi oly  be  consistent  with  the  early  origin  ot 
the  book,  and  this  reduces  the  conclusion  to  a  mere  pos- 
sibility. 

I  now  quote  the  second  evidence : 

(2)  From  the  Psalm  in  chapter  two,  which  consists  largely  of 
reminiscences  from  Psalms  (in  the  manner  of  Psalms  cxlii.,  cxliii.,, 
cxliv.,  1-11),  many  of  them  not  of  early  origin  (compare  verse, 
2,  Psalms  xviii.,  Ixv.,  cxx.,  i.;  verse  3,  Psalms  xviii ,  iv.,  xlii., 
vii.;  verse  4,  Psalms  xxxi.,  xxii;,  Lam.  iii.,  liv,;  verse  5,  Psalms 
xviii.,  iv.,  cxvi.,  iii.,  Ixix.,  i.;  verse  6,  Psalms  xxx.,  iii,;  verse  7, 
Psalms  cxlii,,  iii.,  xviii.,  vi.;  verse  8,  Psalms  xxxi.,  vi.;  verse  9, 
Psalms  1.,  xiv.,  cxvi.,  xvii.,  iii.,  viii.):  a  Psalm  of  Jonah's  own 
age  would  certainly  have  been  more  original,  as  it  would  also 
have  shown  a  more  antique  coloring. 

Lest  the  reader  should  fail  to  look  up  these  refer- 
ences, and  to  make  the  comparisons  necessary  in  order 
to  see  the  force  of  the  evidence,  I  shall  copy  the  pas- 
sages referred  to  in  full.  I  shall  do  this  for  another 
reason — because  it  is  quite  the  custom  of  these  crit'cs 
to  present  an  array  of  references  which  scarcely  any- 
body will  have  the  patience  to  study  out,  but  which  will 
be  taken  by  many  as  conclusive  proof  that  the  learned 
and  laborious  author  has  by  hard  labor  learned  the  abso- 
lute truth  of  what  he  is  writing.  A  severe  test  of  some 
of  these  groups  <  f  figures  now  and  then  is  a  healthy 
exercise  for  the  reader,  and  it  often  proves  a  bombshell 
under  the  writer.  Below  I  give  the  verses  in  Jonah's 
p?alm  cited  above,  and  those  in  other  psalms  of  which 
it  is  claimed  that  they  are  reminiscences. 


36  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 


Verse  2. 


"  I  cried  by  reason  of  mine  aflliction  unto  the  Lord, 
And  he  answered  me  ; 
Out  of  the  belly  of  Sheol  cried  I, 
And  thou  heardest  my  voice." 

Alleged  Parallels. 
"The  chords  of  Sheol  were  round  about  me: 

The  snares  of  death  came  upon  me. 

In  my  d'stress  I  called  upon  the  Lord, 

And  cried  unto  my  God : 

He  heard  my  voice  out  of  his  temple, 

And  my  cry  before  him  came  into   his  ears  "  (Ps.  xviii.  5,  6).' 
"  In  my  distress  I  cried  unto  the  Lord, 

And  he  answered  me"  (Ps.  cxx.  1). 

Now,  the  only  thoughts  common  to  these  passages 
are  those  of  calling  upon,  or  crying  to  God  in  disfress,' 
and  being  heard  by  him ;  and  these  are  so  common- 
place in  the  experiences  of  praying  people,  that  to  find 
I  hem  expressed  in  similar  terms  by  different  authors,  is 
no  evidence  at  all  that  one  copies  from  another. 

Verse  3. 
*  For  thou  didst  cast  me  into  the  deep,  in  the  heart  of  the  seas,  ] 
A  nd  the  flood  was  round  about  me ; 
All  thy  waves  and  thy  billows  passed  over  me." 

Alleged  Parallels. 
"And  the  floods  of  ungodliness  made  me  afraid"  (Psa.  xviii.  4). 
•'  Deep  calleth  unto  deep  at  the  noise  of  thy  water-spouts  : 
All  thy  waves  and  thy  billows  are  gone  over  me  "  (Psa.  xlii.  7). 

The  only  identical  thought  common  to  any  two  of 
these  three  passages,  is  that  respecting  God's  waves  and 
billows ;  and  there  is  no  ground  for  assuming  that  in 
either  there  is  a  reminiscence  from  the  other.  In  the 
latter  instance  the  writer  is  speaking  figuratively  of  his 
troubles,  which  he  compares  to  waves  and  billows  going 


PROF.  DUtVER  ON  JONAff.  37 

over  him,  a  very  common  comparison  for  one  living  by 

the  sea;  and  Jonah,  when  in  the  fish's  bowels,  had  no 

reason  to  remember  the  psalm  in  order  to  say  that  the 

waves  and  billows  were  rolling  over  him. 

Verse  4. 

"And  I  said,  I  am  cast  out  from  before  thine  eyes  ; 

Yet  I  will  look  again  toward  thy  holy  temple." 

Alleged  Parallels. 
"As  for  me,  I  said  in  my  haste,  I  am  cut  off  from  before  thine 
eyes- 
Nevertheless  thou  heardest  the  voice  of  my  supplication  when 
I  cried  unto  thee  "  (Psa.  xxxi.  22). 
"  Waters  flowed  over  my  head :  I  said  I  am  cut  off"  (Lam.  iii.  54). 

The  idea  of  being  "  cut  off,"  when  in  great  trouble, 
is  the  only  one  common  to  these  passages;  but  surely 
it  is  too  commonplace  to  justify  the  assumption  of  a 
reminiscence.  It  occurs  dozens  of  times  in  the  Old 
Testament,  as  any   one  can  see  by  a  mere  glance  at  a 

Concordance. 

Verse  6. 

"  The  waters  compassed  me  about,  even  to  the  soul ; 
The  deep  was  round  about  me  : 
The  weeds  were  wrapped  about  my  head." 

Alleged  Parallels. 

**  The  cords  of  death  compassed  me, 

And  the  floods  of  ungodliness  made  me  afraid  "  (Psa.  xviii.  4). 
"  The  cords  of  death  compassed  me. 

And  the  pains  of  Sheol  got  hold  upon  me  : 

I  found  trouble  and  sorrow  "  (Pda.  cxvi.  3). 
"  Save  me,  0  God  : 

For  the  waters  are  come  in  unto  my  soul  "  (Psa.  xx.  1). 

While  we  h- ve  here  a  striking  reminiscence  in  one  of 
the  psalms  from  the  other,  the  only  appearance  of  rem- 
iniscence between  either  and   Jonah    is  found  in  the 


38  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

clauses,  "  The  waters  are  come  in  un^o  my  soul/^  and, 
"  the  waters  compassed  me  about  even  to  the  soulJ^  This 
is  very  probably  a  reminiscence;  for  the  thought  of 
waters,  either  real,  or  figuratively  so-called,  so  pressing 
around  one  as  to  reach  his  soul,  is  quite  original,  and  is 
not  likely  to  have  originated  with  two  writers  independ- 
ently. But  if  David  wrote  the  Sixty-ninth  Psalm,  as 
its  inscri^)* ion  asserts,  or  if  it  was  written  by  any  one  who 
lived  between  David  and  Jonah,  then  a  reminiscence 
from  it  in  the  Book  of  Jonah  does  not  prove  a  date  for 
the  latter  this  side  the  prophet's  own  lifetime.  To  serve 
the  purpose  of  our  critic,  it  must  be  proved  that  the 
psalm  was  written  too  late  for  the  author  of  the  Bo(  k 
of  Jonah  to  have  seen  it,  and,  at  the  same  time,  to  have 
had  authentic  knowledge  of  Jonah's  career.  This  can 
not  be  done. 

Verse  6. 

"  I  went  down  to  the  bottoms  of  the  mountains  ; 
The  earth  with  her  bars  closed  upon  me  forever: 
Yet  hast  thou  brought  up  my  life  from  the  pit, 
0  Lord  my  God." 

Alleged  Parallel. 

"  O  Lord,  thou  hast  brought  up  my  soul  from  Sheol : 
Thou  hast  kept  me  alive,  that  I  should  not  go  down  to  the  pit '' 
(Ps.  XXX.  3). 

Here  everything  turns  upon  the  use  of  the  word  pit. 
To  go  down  to  the  pit  is  a  common  expression  in  many 
OJd  Testament  writers  (see  Concordance)  for  death ;  and 
to  fall  into  a  pit,  for  any  sudden  calamity,  \yhen, 
therefore,  it  is  said  by  Jonah,  "Thou  hast  brougiit  up 
my  life  from  the  pit,"  he  was  using  a  commonplace 
figure  of  speech,  but  reversing  the  direction  of  (he 
thought,  as  his  deliverance  from  death  required.    Instead 


PROF.  DRIVER  ON  JONaB.  ^9 

of  a  reminiscence  from  the  Thirtieth  Psalm,  there 
is  here  only  the  use  of  an  expression  very  common 
among  his  countrymen. 

Verse  7. 
"  When  my  soul  fainted  within  me,  T  remembered  the  Lord  : 
And  my  prayer  came  in  unto  thee,  into  thy  holy  temple. 
Alleged  Parallels. 
"  When  my  soul  fainted  within  me,  thou  knewest  my  path. 
In  the  way  wherein  I  walked  have  they  hidden  a  snare  for 
me"  (Ps.  cxlii.  3).  ^^    t     ^ 

« In  my  distress  I  called  upon  the  name  of  the  Lord, 
And  cried  unto  my  God  ; 

He  heard  my  voice  out  of  his  temple,  ^ 

And  my  cry  came  before  him  into  his  ears"  (Ps.  xvni.  b). 

Here  we  have  the  identical  expression,  '^  My  soul 
fainted  within  me,''  and  the  identical  thought  that  the 
prayer  of  the  man  in  distress  came  in  unto  the  Lord ; 
but  both  the  expression  and  the  thought  are  common- 
'  place,  and  give  no  evidence  that  the  author  of  either 
poem  had  seen  the  other. 

Verse  8. 
"  They  that  regard  lying  vanities, 
Forsake  their  own  mercy." 
Alleged  Parallel. 
"  I  hate  them  that  regard  lying  vanities ; 
But  I  trust  in  the  Lord  "  (Ps.  xxxi.  6). 
The  term  vanities  occurs  a  number  of  times  in  the 
OUl  Testament,  being  found  in  Deuteronomy  (xxxii.  21), 
I    Kinus   (xvi.  13,  26),  and   in  other  books;    but  the 
expression  'Mying  vanities"  is  found  only  in  these  two 
places,  and  it  is  probably  a  reminiscence  in  one  or  the- 
other.     If  the  psalm,  as  its  superscription  asserts,  was 
written  by  David,  the  author  of  Jonah  may  have  bor- 
rowed the  expression  from  it;   but  if  the  psalm  was 


40  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

written  after  the  captivity,  then  the  author  of  it  may 
have  borrowed  from  Jonah. 

Verse  9. 
*'  But  I  will  sacrifice  unto  thee  with  the  voice  of  thanksgiving, 
I  will  pay  that  which  I  have  vowed. 
Salvation  is  of  the  Lord." 

Alleged  Parallels. 
"  Offer  unto  God  the  sacrifices  of  thanksgiving ; 

And  pay  the  vows  unto  the  Most  High  "  (Ps.  1.  14). 
"I  will  offer  unto  thee  sacrifices  of  thanksgiving, 

And  will  call  upon  the  name  of  the  Lord  "  (Ps.  cxvi.  17). 
**  Salvation  belongeth  unto  the  Lord ; 
Thy  b  essing  be  upon  thy  people  "  (Ps.  iii.  8). 

In  the  identical  expression,  "  sacrifice  of  thanksgiv- 
ing,'^ found  in  the  two  psalms,  there  is  undoubtedly  a 
reminiscence ;  but  the  expressi  n  is  found  in  the  Book 
of  Leviticus,  where  it  occurs  repeatedly  (see  vii.  12,  13; 
xxii.  29),  and  this  book  was  written,  according  to  the 
received  chronology,  more  than  five  hundred  years  be- 
fore the  time  of  Jonah.  But  as  this  does  not  suit  our 
critics,  who  deny  the  Mosaic  authorship  of  Leviticus, 
we  must  tell  them  that  it  also  occurs  in  the  Book  of 
Amos,  who,  as  they  all  admit,  was  a  contemporary  of 
Jonah.  Amos  says  to  Israel :  '^  Offer  a  sacrifice  of 
thanksgiving  of  that  which  is  leavened;  and  proclaim 
free-will  offerings,  and  publish  them"  (iv.  5).  If,  then, 
it  is  a  reminiscence  in  Jonah,  it  could  have  been  taken 
from  Amos,  and  it  is  idle  to  claim  that  it  was  taken  from 
psalms  written  four  hundred  years  later.  But  after  all, 
the  author  of  Jonah  does  not  use  the  exact  expression, 
or  express  the  exact  idea  found  in  Amos,  in  the  law,  and 
in  the  Psalms ;  for  his  words  are  not,  "  I  will  offer  the 
sacrifices  of  thanksgiving";  but,  "  I  will  sacrifice  unto 
thee  with  the  voice  of  thanksgiving." 


PROF.  DRIVER  ON  JONAH.  41 

As  to  the  thought  expressed  at  the  close  of  verse  9, 
"  Salvation  is  of  the  Lord ";  and  in  the  Third  Psalm, 
"  Salvation  belongeth  unto  the  Lord  ";  it  is  expressed  so 
often  in  nearly  the  same  words,  and  is  a  thought  so 
commonplace  in  itself,  that  it  furnishe-5  no  evidence  of  a 
reminiscence. 

We  have  now  gone  over  this  whole  formidable  list  of 
"  reminiscences,"  and  we  have  found  only  two  or  three 
of  them  which  can  with  any  plausibility  be  so  called. 
It  is  easy  to  see  that  the  critic  who  compiled  it  took  up 
every  verse,  and  every  clause  of  every  verse  in  the  poem 
of  Jonah,  and  with  Concordance  in  hand  ransacked  all 
the  Pi-alms  which  he  supposed  of  late  date,  together 
with  other  late  writings,  in  search  of  words,  phrases, 
and  thoughts,  which  he  could  say  were  borrowed  from 
these  by  the  author  of  Jonah.  This  is  a  very  cheap 
show  of  learning;  for  a  boy  twelve  years  old  could  do 
the  work.  The  result  is  the  empty  basket  which  we 
have  just  turned  bottom  upward. 

If  the  attempt  had  been  a  success,  we  should  have 
found  every  single  sentence  in  this  beautiful  poem  of 
Jonah  a  borrowed  scrap  from  the  pen  of  some  real 
poet,  and  the  whole  would  have  been  a  "  patch  quilt,'' 
without  a  piece  of  original  goods  to  be  seen.  I  venture 
the  assertion  that  so  excellent  a  poem  as  this  was  never 
composed  in  this  way  since  the  world  began ;  and  it 
never  will  be.  On  the  contrary,  it  would  be  most 
natural  for  poets  writing  at  a  later  day,  and  being  per- 
fectly familiar  with  this  poem  to  borrow,  some  one,  and 
some  another,  of  its  fine  passages,  and  use  them  in  their 
own  compositions.  But  natural  as  this  is,  it  was  not 
done  except  in  two  or  three  instances  at  most,  and  these 
we  have  pointed  out  above. 


III.  IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE? 

If  I  were  to  hear  the  naked  statement,  without 
preface  or  supplement,  that  a  man  was  once  thrown 
overboard  from  a  ship,  was  swallowed  by  a  fish  as  he 
fell  into  the  sea,  was  kept  in  the  fish's  bowels  three  days 
and  three  nights  alive,  and  then  thrown  up  alive  on  dry 
land,  I  would  regard  it  as  a  ^'  fish  story,"  and  pay  no 
attention  to  it.  So,  if  I  were  to  hear  the  naked  story 
tliat  a  man  once  went  into  the  greatest  and  wickedest 
city  on  the  earth,  and  by  preaching  against  it  one  day 
caused  the  people,  from  the  king  on  his  throne  to  the  beg- 
gar on  the  street,  to  sit  down  in  sack-cloth  and  ashes  and 
call  mightily  on  God  till  he  heard  and  forgave  them,  I 
would  think  of  the  life-long  preaching  done  by  Spur- 
geon  in  London,  and  that  of  other  great  preachers  in 
other  great  cities,  and  I  would  not  believe  the  story. 
Again,  if  I  were  to  hear,  without  historical  connections, 
that  a  man  was  sitting  once  on  a  sandhill  in  a  very  hot 
country,  suffering  almost  death  with  the  heat,  and  that 
in  a  single  night  a  gourd  vine  grew  up,  and  the  next  day 
made  a  delightful  shade  over  his  head,  I  would  think  of 
J^ck  and  the  bean  stalk,  and  would  treat  it  as  an  idle 
tale.  In  like  manner,  were  I  to  hear  that  a  man  once 
stood  at  the  mouth  of  a  cave,  and  called  to  a  dead  man 
within,  who  had  been  dead  four  days,  and  that  the  dead 
man  immediately  stood  outside  the  cave  alive,  still 
bound  hand  and  foot  with  the  grave  cloths,  I  would  not 
believe  that  till  I  learned  who  did  it,  and  why  it  was  done. 

42 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  iNCtiEDlBLEf  43 

Now  unfortunately  this  is  the  way  in  which  the  three 
principal  incidents  in  the  story  of  Jonah  come  to  the 
ears  of  many  p  rsons,  and  it  accounts  for  the  widesprea^l 
incredulity  respecting  them.  To  believe  them  is  to 
believe  three  miracles;  and  we  can  not  believe  that  a 
mere  idle  wonder  is  a  work  of  God's  hand.  A  year  or 
two  ago  I  went  to  see  the  performance  of  Herrmann, 
the  great  magician ;  and  I  witnessed  feats  that  were  as 
mysterious  to  me  as  any  miracles  of  which  we  read  in 
the  Bible;  but  if  Herrmann  had  claimed,  which  he  did 
not,  that  they  were  wrought  by  the  direct  power  of 
God,  I  would  have  denied  it  flatly;  for  I  could  not 
believe  that  God  would  take  part  in  a  show  which  did 
no  good  except  to  gratify  idle  curioirity,  and  to  fill  Herr- 
mann's pocket  with  silver.  If  I  am  called  on  to  be- 
lieve a  wonder  which  could  be  wrought  only  by  the 
direct  power  of  God,  I  must  see  in  it  something  that 
makes  it  worthy  of  God.  When  the  occasion  is  such, 
or  the  manifest  purpose  is  such,  as  to  demand,  or  even 
to  justify,  the  interposition  of  God's  hand,  this  at  once 
removes  the  incredibility  which  would  otherwise  attach 
to  the  story.  I  propose  now  to  look  at  the  story  of 
Jonah  from  this  point  of  view^,  and  to  see  if  it  will 
remain  incredible  after  it  is  understood. 

Behold,  then,  the  city  of  Nineveh,  "  that  great  city," 
the  greatest  that  had  thus  far  been  built  on  earth,  the 
head  of  the  Assyrian  Empire,  which  was  the  great- 
est and  most  powerful  empire  yet  established  among 
men.  The  city  is  wholly  given  to  idolatry,  and  to  all 
those  abominations  which  ever  characterize  idolatrous 
peoples.  It  leads  in  these  abominations  all  the  nations 
of  Western  Asia,  over  all  of  which  its  king  has  rule. 
God  looks  down   upon  the  vast  population  of  both  city 


44  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

and  empire,  and  he  sees  in  every  individual  of  the  teem- 
ing millions  one  of  the  immortal  creatures  of  his  hand 
reveling  in  iniquity  and  rushing  on  to  eternal  ruin. 
He  is  the  same  God  who  so  loved  the  world  that  he 
gave  his  own  Son,  that  whosoever  believeth  in  him  might 
not  perish,  but  have  eternal  life.  Did  he  who  cared  so 
much  for  men  afterward,  care  nothing  for  them  then  ? 
Or,  do  not  the  words  just  quoted  express  the  divine 
compassion  w^hich  moved  him  in  all  the  ages  before 
the  advent  of  Christ?  He  longs  for  these  prodigals, 
and  he  is  about  to  institute  measures  to  bring  them  to 
repontance. 

The  Scriptures  reveal  to  us  no  way  in  which  God 
brings  men  to  repentance,  except  in  connection  with 
preaching.  But  if  Nineveh  is  to  be  brought  to  repent- 
ance, the  task  must  be  assigned  to  no  ordinary  preacher. 
God  assigned  it  to  the  prophet  Jonah,  the  son  of  Amit- 
tai,  of  Gath-hepher.  Very  little  is  said  of  this  prophet 
outside  the  book  which  bears  his  name,  but  that  little 
implies  a  great  deal.  He  lived  under  the  reign  of  Jero- ' 
boam  the  Second.  This  prince  came  to  the  throne  of 
Israel  under  most  discouraging  circumstances.  During 
the  reign  of  his  grandfather,  Jehoahaz,  Hazsel,  king  of 
Syria,  had  subdued  and  overrun  Israel.  In  the  expres- 
sive language  of  the  Book  of  Kings,  he  "  destroyed 
them,  and  made  them  like  the  dust  in  threshing."  He 
left  Jehoahaz  only  fifty  horsemen,  ten  chariots  and  ten 
thousand  footmen  (II.  Kings  xiii.  3-7).  His  son 
Joash,  by  three  successful  battles  fought  under  encour- 
agement given  by  the  prophet  Elisha,  succeeded  in 
throwing  oflp  the  yoke  of  Syria,  but  the  country  was  left 
in  extreme  weakness  and  distress,  so  that  with  reference 
to  the  beginning  of  Jeroboam's  reign  it  is  said :  "  The 


/ 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE?  45 

Lord  saw  the  affliction  of  Israel,  that  it  was  very  bitter; 
for  there  was  none  shut  up  or  left  at  large,  neither  was 
there  any  helper  for  Israel^'  (xiv.  26).  Though  coming 
to  the  throne  under  such  circumstances,  Jeroboam,  in  the 
course  of  a  reign  of  forty-one  years,  not  only  re- 
established the  prosperity  of  his  nation,  but  he  con- 
quered Syria,  and  extended  the  northern  boundary  of 
his  kingdom  to  the  utmost  limit  that  it  had  attained 
under  David  and  Solomon.  In  the  language  of  the 
text,  "  He  restored  the  border  of  Israel  from  the  enter- 
ing of  Hamath  unto  the  sea  of  the  Arabah  [the  Dead 
Sea] ;"  and  he  did  this,  the  text  adds,  "  according  to  the 
word  of  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel,  which  he  spake  by 
the  hand  of  his  servant  Jonah,  the  son  of  Amittai,  the 
prophet,  which  was  of  Gath-hepher '^  (xiv.  25).  The 
account  of  this  long  reign  and  of  these  mighty  con- 
quests is  remarkably  brief,  being  limited  to  four  verses; 
but  the  author  refers  the  reader  for  the  "  rest  of  the  acts 
of  Jeroboam,  and  all  that  he  did,  and  his  might,  how  he 
warred,  and  how  he  recovered  Damascus,  and  Hamath,'^ 
to  the  Book  of  the  Chronicles  of  the  Kings  of  Israel. 
Doubtless  if  we  had  that  book  we  should  find  the  story 
a  long  one. 

Now  if,  in  the  absence  of  the  fuller  record,  we 
inquire  how  it  was  that  all  these  conquests  were  made 
"  according  to  the  word  of  Jehovah,  the  God  of  Israel, 
wliich  he  spake  by  the  mouth  of  his  servant  Jonah,^^  I 
think  we  shall  find  the  answer  in  what  the  author  tells 
us  a  few  chapters  back  of  a  similar  work  done  by  the 
prophet  Elisha.  This  famous  prophet  lived  under  the 
reign  of  Jehoram  of  Israel,  who  was  continually  at  war 
with  Ben-Hadad,  king  of  Syria.  During  those  wars  the 
king  of   Syria  frequently  took  counsel  with  his  chief 


46  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

officers,  and  said :  "  In  such  and  such  a  place  shall  be 
my  camp."  But  Elisha  would  gay  to  Jehoram :  "  Be- 
ware that  thou  pass  not  such  a  place,  for  thither  the 
Syrians  are  coming  down."  By  accepting  this  warning 
the  king  of  Israel  ^*  saved  himself,  not  once  or  twice," 
which  means  many  times.  It  was  impossible  that  the 
king  of  Syria  should  fail  to  see  every  time  that  his 
plans  had  been  anticipated ;  so  '*  his  heart  was  sorely 
troubled  about  this  thing."  As  his  plans  had  been 
made  known  only  to  his  confidential  advisers,  he  came 
to  the  conclusion  that  one  of  them  was  betraying  him. 
He  called  them  together  and  demanded  :  "  Will  ye  not 
show  me  which  of  us  is  for  the  king  of  Israel?"  One 
of  them  promptly  answered :  "Nay,  my  lord,  O  king; 
but  Elisha,  the  prophet  that  is  in  Israel,  telleth  the 
king  of  Israel  the  words  that  thou  speakest  in  thy  bed- 
chamber" (II.  Kings  vi.  8-12).  Ben-Hadad  inquired 
where  Elisha  was  sojourning,  and  sent  a  troop  of  cavalry 
to  surround  the  town  of  Dothan  and  take  him  pris- 
oner, with  the  result  that  Elisha  took  captive  the  whole 
troop,  but  gave  them  a  good  dinner  and  sent  them  home 
unharmed.  Having  given  us  this  account,  when  the 
author  says  that  the  victories  of  Jeroboam  Avere  achieved 
according  to  the  word  of  Jehovah  by  Jonah,  he  leaves 
us  to  suppose  that  the  process  was  the  same,  or  similar. 
We  must  understand,  then,  that  during  the  forty-one 
years  of  Jeroboam's  reign,  Jonah  was  his  prophetic 
y^  adviser  respecting  his  military  movements,  and  that  his 
fame  as  such  was  spread  abroad  among  surrounding 
nations.  Especially  would  it  have  spread  into  the 
region  about  Nineveh,  which  was  separated  from  the 
field  of  Jeroboam's  conquests  only  by  the  river 
Euphrates.     It  is   very  clear  from  all  this,  that  Jonah 


IS  THE  STOR  Y  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE  f  47 

was  the  most  famous,  and  the  greatest  prophet  then 
living.  It  was  in  accord,  therefore,  with  the  wisdom 
which  governs  all  of  God's  dealings  with  men,  that  he, 
rather  than  any  other  man,  was  selected  to  preach  to 
the  Ninevites. 

There  are  times  in  the  experience  of  every  com- 
munity, when  rebukes  from  a  preacher  of  righteousness 
fall  unheeded  on  the  ears  of  the  people;  and  thtre  are 
others,  when  the  same  rebukes  are  rewarded  with  the 
richest  results.  In  our  common  experience  we  can 
learn  in  which  of  these  conditions  a  community  is  only 
by  trial;  and  we  are  often  very  bitterly  disappointed. 
But  God,  who  knows  the  secrets  of  all  hearts,  can  never 
be  mistaken  in  choosing  the  hour  at  which  to  strike, 
and  he  chose  a  favorable  time  at  which  to  send  Jonah 
to  Nineveh.  The  history  of  the  city  at  that  particular 
time  is  to  us  wrapped  in  profound  obscurity;  and  it 
is  a  fair  inference  that  the  empire  was  in  a  depressed 
condition,  furnishing  no  startling  events  to  catch  the 
attention  of  historian  or  sculptor.  Such  a  state  of 
affairs  would  be  favorable  to  a  call  for  repentance.  At 
the  precise  time  in  which  the  people  were  best  prepared 
for  such  a  message,  God  spoke  to  Jonah  at  his  home  in 
Gath-hepher,  and  said:  "Arise,  go  to  Nineveh,  that 
great  city,  and  cry  against  it ;  for  their  wickedness  is 
come  up  before  me"  (Jonah  i.  1).  Instead  of  obeying, 
Jonah  arose  and  started  in  the  opposite  direction. 
God's  command  would  have  sent  him  toward  the  north, 
but  he  turns  toward  the  south,  and  he  stops  not  until 
he  reaches  Joppa,  the  principal  seaport  of  the  kingdom 
of  Judah.  Here  he  finds  a  ship  sailing  to  Tarshish,  the 
farthest  port  of  the  west  to  which  vessels  then  sailed. 
He  was  running  "  away  from  the  presence  of  Jehovah,'* 


48  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

which  meaDS  from  the  region  in  which  he  thought  it 
probable  that  Jehovah  would  speak  to  him  again.  He 
supposed  that  if  he  could  get  as  far  away  as  Tarshish, 
God  would  not  call  him  back  from  so  great  a  distance 
to  send  him  on  the  disagreeable  mission. 

We  might  conjecture  a  number  of  motives  for  which 
Jonah  undertook  this  desperate  fligiit,  and  perhaps  all 
of  them  might  have  had  some  part  in  causing  it ;  for 
men  do  not  often  embark  upon  desperate  enterprises 
without  a  number  of  motives;  but  there  is  one  which 
he  himself  mentioned  afterward,  and  we  must  accept 
this  as  at  least  the  chief  of  all.  When,  afterward,  he  saw 
that  God  did  not  destroy  the  city  according  to  his  pre- 
diction, "  it  displeased  Jonah  exceedingly,  and  he  was 
angry'';  and  in  a  prayer,  which  was  rather  a  remon- 
strance against  Jehovah's  mercy,  he  said:  "O  Jehovah, 
was  not  this  my  saying,  when  I  was  yet  in  my  country? 
Therefore  I  hastened  to  flee  to  Tarshish ;  for  I  knew 
that  thou  art  a  gracious  God,  and  full  of  compassion,' 
slow  to  anger,  and  plenteous  in  mercy,  and  repentest 
thee  of  the  evil"  (iv.  1,  2).  This  shows  that  he  fled  to 
Tarshish  because  he  did  not  believe  that  God  would 
destroy  the  city.  He  believed  that  even  after  its  doom 
was  pronounced,  God's  grace,  compassion,  and  mercy 
would  lead  him  to  spare  the  great  population,  and  that 
his  own  mission  would  therefore  appear  to  be  a  failure. 
This  reasoning  shows  plainly  that  if  he  had  been  sure 
that  the  destruction  of  the  city  would  follow,  he  would 
have  gone ;  and  why  ?  Undoubtedly  because  Jonah,  in 
common  with  his  countrymen,  hated  the  Ninevites,  and 
would  have  been  glad  to  witness  their  destruction.  That 
proud  city  had  sent  forth  its  desolating  armies  into 
neighboring  kingdoms,  through  mere  lust  of  conquest, 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE?  49 

and  had  aroused  the  intensest  hatred  of  every  conquered 
uation,  and  do  less  that  of  every  nation  which  sympa- 
thized with  the  oppressed.  While  God,  then,  was  moved 
by  the  grace,  compassion,  and  mercy  of  which  Jonah 
speaks  so  admirably,  and  desired  through  the  ministra- 
tion of  Jonah  to  bring  the  Ninevites  to  repentance,  that 
he  might  save  them,  the  preacher  whom  he  chose  was 
full  of  hatred  toward  them,  and  refused  to  go  because 
he  desired  their  destruction.  Jonah  but  reflected  the 
sentiments  of  all  Israel ;  and  this  brings  prominently  to 
view  another  problem  for  Jehovah  to  work  out,  the 
riddance  of  his  own  people  of  a  feeling  so  unworthy, 
not  to  say  degrading.  We  shall  see  in  the  sequel  that 
the  aim  at  this  riddance  played  an  important  part  in 
directing  the  course  of  events. 

Jonah's  flight  to  Joppa,  whence  he  expected  to  set 
sail  for  Tarshish,  covered  a  distance  of  not  less  than  one 
hundred  miles.  He  doubtless  traveled  rapidly,  and  his 
mental  agitation  must  have  been  extreme ;  for  he  had 
reason  to  fear  at  every  step  some  providential  interfer- 
ence with  his  attempt  to  escape  God's  command.  But 
when  he  found  passage  in  a  ship,  and  was  far  out  at  sea 
with  every  prospect  of  a  favorable  voyage,  his  excite- 
ment naturally  subsided,  and  nervous  depression  fol- 
lowed. He  sought  his  berth,  and  fell  asleep.  So 
profound  was  his  sleep,  that  when  the  storm  arose  even 
the  tossing  of  the  vessel  did  not  awake  him.  The 
master  of  the  vessel  was  astonished  to  find  him  asleep 
under  such  circumstances,  and  calling  him  a  "sleeper,'^ 
he  cried  :  "  What  meanest  thou,  O  sleeper  ?  Arise,  call 
upon  thy  God,  if  so  be  that  he  will  think  upon  us,  that 
we  perish  not.''  The  cry  was  like  a  thunderclap  to 
Jonah.     He  rushed  on  deck  to  find  that  while  he  slept 


50  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

such  a  tempest  had  fallen  on  the  ship  as  threatened  its 
destruction;  that  the  sailors  had  cast  the  freight  into  the 
sea  to  lighten  the  vessel ;  that  every  one  had  then  called 
mightily  upon  his  god  for  safety;  and  that  they  had  just 
agreed  to  cast  lots  that  they  miglit  know  on  whose 
account  this  evil  had  come  upon  them.  The  true  cause 
flashed  across  Jonah's  mind  in  an  instant ;  but  he  had 
nerve  enough  to  join  in  the  casting  of  lots.  When  he 
drew  the  black  ball  from  the  urn,  he  was  immediately 
plied  with  questions  faster  than  he  could  answer  them : 
"  What  is  thine  occupation  ?  Whence  comest  thou  ? 
What  is  thy  country?  Of  what  people  art  thou?" 
When  they  gave  him  a  chance  to  speak,  he  confessed 
the  whole  truth :  "  I  am  a  Hebrew,  and  I  fear  Jehovah, 
the  God  of  heaven,  who  made  the  sea  and  the  dry  land. 
I  flee  from  the  presence  of  Jehovah."  His  questioners 
had  perhaps  never  before  heard  of  this  God — a  God  who 
made  the  sea  and  the  dry  land — and  when  they  heard 
that  it  was  He  who  had  been  oiFended,  they  were  '^  ex- 
ceedingly afraid."  If  the  God  who  made  the  sea  had 
raised  the  tempest  against  them,  what  could  they  do? 
Believing  what  Jonah  confessed,  and  naturally  thinking 
that  his  knowledge  of  this  God  would  enable  him  to 
judge  what  would  appease  his  wrath,  they  demand  of 
him :  "  What  shall  be  done  unto  thee,  that  the  sea  may 
be  calm  for  us?''  This  demand  put  Jonah  to  the  test 
of  all  the  manliness  that  was  in  him.  Had  he  been  a 
coward,  or  a  sneak,  he  would  have  begged  the  sailors  to 
let  him  remain  on  board  till  the  ship  went  to  pieces. 
But  he  was  too  manly  to  permit  others  to  perish  on  his 
account,  and  too  honest,  now  that  God  had  overtaken 
him,  to  try  to  escape  the  fate  which  he  deserved.  To 
the  surprise  of  all,  he  answered :  "  Take  me  up  and  cast 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE f  51 

me  forth  into  the  sea;  so  shall  the  sea  be  calm  unto  you : 
for  I  know  that  for  my  sake  this  great  tempest  is  upon 
you."  Generosity  begets  generosity.  As  he  was  un- 
willing for  them  to  suffer  on  his  account,  they  generously 
resolved  not  to  save  themselves  at  the  expense  of  his 
life.  They  turn  again  to  their  abandoned  oars,  and 
"  rowed  hard  to  get  back  to  land."  Their  efforts  are  in 
vain.  The  sea  grows  more  and  more  tempestuous 
against  them,  and  they  see  clearly  that  the  God  who 
made  the  sea  is  determined  to  have  his  own  way,  as 
declared  by  Jonah.  Trained  to  stand  by  a  comrade  to 
the  last,  and  to  perish  if  need  be  in  the  effort  to  save 
him,  they  tremble  at  the  thought  of  casting  even  a 
strange  passenger  into  the  sea  to  save  themselves;  and 
fearing  lest,  even  with  the  clear  demonstration  before 
them,  they  might  offend  the  God  whom  they  were  seek- 
ing to  appease,  before  they  laid  hands  on  Jonah  they 
offered  this  prayer:  "We  beseech  thee,  O  Jehovah,  we 
beseech  thee,  let  us  not  perish  for  this  man's  life,  and 
lay  not  upon  us  innocent  blood,  for  thou,  O  Jehovah, 
hast  done  as  it  pleased  thee."  Thus,  for  the  first  time 
in  their  lives  they  prayed  to  Jehovah,  the  only  true  and 
living  God.  Then,  with  the  steady  step  which  only 
trained  sailors  could  command  on  a  vessel  tossed  as  that 
one  was,  they  took  Jonah,  several  men  seizing  him  from 
either  side,  walked  to  the  rail  and  cast  him  into  the 
boiling  sea.  The  vessel  sped  on  its  way  and  they  saw 
him  no  more.  The  wild  tempest  sank  to  a  moderate 
breeze,  the  tossing  waters  stretched  themselves  out  in  a 
gentle  swell.  "  The  sea  ceased  from  hrr  raging."  The 
effect  upon  the  seamen  was  irresistible  :  "  Then  the  men 
feared  Jehovah  exceedingly ;  and  they  offered  a  sacrifice 
unto  Jehovah,  and  made  vows,"     It  is  not  necessary  to 


52  JESUS  AND  JONAH, 

suppose  that  they  waited  till  they  went  ashore  before 
they  offered  this  sacrifice.  They  could  erect  an  altir 
on  the  deck  of  the  ship  and  offer  such  victims  as  they 
had  on  board ;  and,  if  neither  their  altar  nor  the  vic- 
tim was  such  as  the  Mosaic  law  required,  of  which 
they  knew  nothing,  they  could  hope  for  acceptance. 
The  vows  they  made  were  doubtless  vows  to  serve 
Jehovah. 

Thus  far  the  flight  of  Jonah  has  resulted  in  some 
good — in  the  conversion  of  these  seamen  to  the  worship 
of  Jehovah.  And  did  the  good  work  stop  with  them  ? 
Did  they  not  tell  the  story  in  every  seaport  visited  by 
their  ship  in  its  long  voyage?  Did  not  every  one  of 
them  continue  to  tell  the  strange  and  glad  story  as  long 
as  he  lived  ?  This  ship's  company,  we  may  safely  assert, 
were  made  missionaries  to  the  heathen,  preaching  the 
true  God  in  all  the  seaports  of  the  Mediterranean,  and 
thus  a  light  was  kindled  in  the  dark  places  of  the 
western  world. 

But  leaving  this  part  of  the  story,  which  grows  on 
our  imagination  as  we  dwell  upon  it,  we  return  to 
Jonah.  When  he  was  cast  headforemost  into  the  raging 
sea,  he  undoubtedly  believed  that  it  was  a  plunge  into 
hell,  for  he  was  caught  in  the  midst  of  his  sin,  and  now 
he  faces  instant  death.  But  he  finds  himself  sliding 
down  the  cold  throat  of  a  great  fish,  of  whose  wide- 
spread jaws  he  barely  caught  a  glimpse  ere  he  passed 
within  them.  He  is  in  the  bowels  of  the  fish,  with 
every  limb  cramped  as  in  a  vice.  He  can  not  breathe, 
though  he  struggles  for  breath  desperately.  He  suffers 
the  pangs  of  the  dying  in  every  nerve  and  muscle.  He 
realizes  the  plunge  of  the  great  animal  into  the  deep 
waters;  he  hears  the  scraping  of  seaweeds  on  its  sides; 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  XNCREDIBLEf  53 

and,  as  the  fish,  now  full  of  pain  and  alarm  caused  by 
the  struggles  of  a  living  man  within  him,  rushes  hither 
and  thither  in  his  fury,  Jonah  is  conscious  of  all  his 
movements.  What  was  his  sense  of  time?  He  tells  us, 
and  in  the  Fame  breath  he  reveals  the  anguish  which  his 
soul  exporienced.  He  exclaims :  "  The  earth  with  her 
bars  closed  upon  me  forever.  Out  of  the  belly  of  Sheol 
I  cried."  He  expected  every  moment  to  be  his  last ;  he 
was  already  suffering  in  body  and  mind  the  very 
torments  of  the  damned;  every  slow  moment  as  it 
passed  appeared  like  years,  every  day  like  a  cycle  of 
eternity. 

Suddenly  he  feels  the  warm  sun  in  his  face.  He 
opens  his  eyes.  He  sees  the  dry  land  around  him,  and 
down  below  is  the  sea.  The  fish  is  gone,  and  this 
seems  to  be  the  shore  of  his  native  land.  How  long  he 
lay  there  before  he  acquired  strength  to  rise  and  walk; 
whether  he  was  found  there  in  helpless  weakness  by 
some  passerby,  or  made  his  way  unassisted  to  some 
dwelling  where  he  might  procure  food  and  drink,  we 
are  not  informed.  We  are  left  equally  in  the  dark  as  to 
how  long  it  took  him  to  get  back  to  his  home  in  Gath- 
hepher,  and  as  to  the  way  in  which  the  news  of  his  ad- 
venture was  spread  abroad.  The  remarkable  reticence 
which  characterizes  all  of  the  sacred  records,  and  which 
distinguishes  them  from  all  fictitious  writings,  is  strik- 
ingly prominent  here.  But  now  that  the  prophet  has 
been  delivered,  and  is  restored  to  home  and  family  f  »r 
a  time,  we  may  pause  and  look  back  with  the  question, 
is  this  his  mode  of  return  incredible? 

We  can  not  be  mistaken  in  affirming  that  God,  hav- 
ing formed  the  purpose  of  bringing  the  Ninevites  to 
repentance,  was  not  to  be  defeated.     Having  selected 


54  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

the  man  through  whose  preaching  the  good  work  was 
to  be  accomplished,  he  was  not  to  be  outwitted  by  that 
man.  The  runaway  preacher  must  be  brought  back. 
God  could  have  caused  the  wind  to  blow  in  such  a 
direction  as  to  force  back  the  ship,  or  he  could  have 
seized  Jonah  by  the  hair  of  the  head,  and  brought  him 
back  to  Gath-hf  pher ;  but  neither  of  these  methods,  nor 
any  other  that  I  can  think  of,  would  have  been  so  wise 
as  the  one  stated  in  the  story.  No  other  would  have 
involved  so  complete  a  conversion  of  the  heathen 
sailors ;  no  other  could  have  taught  Jonah  so  good  a 
lesson  ;  and  none,  except  the  second  just  mentioned,  could 
have  brought  him  back  so  quick.  The  fish  ran  faster 
than  any  ship  afloat,  and  even  the  ocean  racers  of  the  pres- 
ent day  would  have  been  left  by  him  far  in  the  lurch. 
Jonah  learned,  and  through  his  valuable  experience 
millions  have  learned,  that  when  God  enjoins  a  disagree- 
able duty,  it  is  far  easier  to  go  and  do  it  than  to  run 
away  from  it.  It  was  an  act  worthy  then  of  Him  who 
sees  all  things  in  all  places,  and  who  is  ever-watchful  to 
provide  for  all  the  foreseen  generations  of  men  the 
instruction  which  they  need.  The  far-reaching  eflfects 
of  the  event  in  the  moral  training  of  the  world  removes 
it  as  far  as  the  east  is  from  the  west  away  from  the  cate- 
gory of  idle  wonders.  And  this  is  not  all.  We  may 
safely  say  that  if  Jonah  had  gone  to  Nineveh  when  the 
word  of  Jehovah  first  came  to  him,  his  preaching  would 
have  been  in  vain ;  for  though  he  would  have  come  as  a 
great  prophet,  he  would  not  have  been  "  a  sign  to  the 
Ninevites,^^  in  the  sense  in  which  our  Lord,  as  we  have 
seen,  uses  that  expression :  and  lacking  this  element  of 
power,  his  mission  would  have  been  a  failure.  G  d 
knew  this;  for  he    knows   all  things.     He  knew  that 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE?  55 

Jonah  would  run  away  as  he  did  ;  he  intended  from  the 
beginning  to  bring  him  back  as  he  did ;  and  all  this  was 
necessary  to  the  effective  execution  of  his  benevolent 
])urpose  to  save  the  Ninevites.  From  every  possible 
point  of  view  the  whole  scheme  was  worthy  of  God, 
and  I  confidently  affirm  that  the  story  could  not  have 
been  invented  by  man.  No  myth,  no  legend,  in  the 
whole  range  of  human  literature,  can  compare  with  it 
in  all  the  elements  which  make  it  an  incident  worthy  of 
divine  interpositi  )n.  If  any  man  doubts  this  assertion,  let 
him  select  his  example  and  present  it  for  comparison. 

We  are  not  informed  how  long  Jonah  remained  at 
home  before  God  spoke  to  him  again;  and  this  is  an- 
other example  of  the  reticence  quite  unnatural  to 
fiction,  which  characterizes  this  narrative.  It  may  have 
been  a  day,  a  week,  or  a  month ;  but  when  the  chosen 
moment  came,  God  spoke  to  Jonah  again.  He  says 
nothing  about  the  first  command,  about  the  flight  to 
Joppa,  about  the  storm  at  sea,  about  the  fish.  He  says, 
as  if  for  the  first  time,  "Arise,  go  unto  Nineveh,  that 
great  city,  and  preach  unto  it  the  preaching  that  I  bid 
thee.^'  There  is  no  flight  or  hesitation  this  time. 
"  Jonah  arose  and  went  to  Nineveh."  Why  this 
change  ?  Has  he  altered  his  opinion  as  to  whether  or 
not  God  will  destroy  the  city?  Is  the  distance  to 
Nineveh  any  less  than  it  was  before  ?  Is  the  journey 
any  less  expensive  or  laborious?  Ah,  Jonah  has  learned 
the  lesson  of  implicit  obedience,  the  lesson  of  leaving 
all  consequences  with  God.  He  goes  to  Nineveh.  As 
he  goes,  I  confess  for  my  own  part,  that  if  the  story  of 
Jonah  had  closed  here  without  another  word,  I  would 
be  constrained  to  regard  it  as  one  of  the  most  valuable 
of  all  the  episodes  in  the  Old  Testament. 


56  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

When  he  began  to  cry  out  in  the  streets  of  Nineveh, 
"  Yet  forty  days  and  Nineveh  shall  be  overthrown/'  the 
quehtion  necessarily  went  from  lip  to  lip,  Who  is  this? 
The  answer,  that  it  was  the  great  prophet  of  Israel,  by 
whose  supernatural  foresight  the  victories  of  Jeroboam, 
running  through  a  period  of  forty  years,  had  been  won, 
was  enough  to  arrest  solemn  attention ;  but  when  it  was 
added  that  on  first  receiving  the  command  to  come  and 
utter  this  cry,  he  tried  to  escape  the  task  by  running 
away,  and  sailing  far  out  upon  the  sea,  but  that  Jehovah, 
who  had  given  the  command,  overtook  him,  brought 
him  back  in  the  bowels  of  a  fish,  cast  him  out  alive  on 
dry  land,  and  then  renewed  the  command,  this  added 
tettfold  power  to  the  word  of  the  prophet.  The  Nine- 
vites  believed,  proclaimed  a  fast,  put  on  sack-cloth, 
turned  every  man  from  his  evil  way,  and  called  might- 
ily on  Jehovah.  Is  this  incredible?  I  have  tried  to 
think  what  effect  such  a  proclamation,  by  such  a  man, 
under  such  circumstances,  would  have  in  our  modern 
society ;  and  I  can  think  of  only  one  class  of  persons 
who  would  probably  not  repent,  and  that  is  the  class 
made  up  of  men  who  have  listened  to  the  gospel  for 
years  and  years,  heard  it  in  all  its  power,  in  all  its  ten- 
derness, and  have  so  hardened  their  hearts  by  continued 
resistance  to  it,  that  nothing  less  than  the  thunders  of 
the  judgment  day  is  likely  to  bring  them  to  repentance. 
Men  untrained  to  such  resistance,  as  were  the  Ninevites, 
men  who  had  never  in  their  lives  before  been  confronted 
with  the  outspoken  wrath  of  the  Almighty,  could  only 
tremble  and  repent  and  pray.  The  repentance  of  the 
Ninevites  was  natural.  Most  unnatural  is  the  im- 
penitence of  the  gospel-hardened  sinners  of  our  own 
day. 


IS  THE  STOR  Y  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE  ?  57 

But  the  effect  of  Jonah's  preaching  could  not,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  be  confined  to  the  people  of  Nineveh. 
Throughout  the  Assyrian  empire,  and  wherever  on  earth 
the  name  of  Nineveh  was  known,  the  influence  of  her 
example  must  have  been  felt;  and  the  revelations  of 
eternity  alone  will  enable  us  to  know  how  much  good 
was  accomplished.  It  would  not  be  strange  if  many 
souls  unknown  to  fame,  both  in  Nineveh  and  elsewhere, 
were  brought  to  lasting  repentance  and  finally  to  eternal 
life.  Jonah  was  a  great  missionary  to  the  heathen,  and 
we  may  be  sure  that  his  work  was  not  in  vain. 

How  Jonah  ascertained  that  God  "  repented  of  the 
evil  that  he  said  he  would  do  unto  the  Ninevites,''  we 
are  not  informed;  and  this  is  another  instance  of  the 
reticence  common  to  this  and  other  books  of  the  Bible. 
But  when  he  did  ascertain  it  he  was  angry ;  and  he  gave 
vent  to  his  anger  by  exclaiming:  "O  Jehovah,  was  not 
this  my  saying  when  I  was  yet  in  my  own  country? 
Therefore  I  hasted  to  flee  unto  Tarshish ;  for  I  knew 
that  thou  art  a  gracious  God,  and  full  of  compassion, 
slow  to  anger,  and  plenteous  in  mercy,  and  repentest  thee 
of  the  evil.  Therefore  now,  O  Jehovah,  take,  I 
beseech  thee,  my  life  f  om  me;  for  it  is  better  for  me  to 
die  than  to  live."  God  answered  him,  "  Doest  thou 
well  to  be  angry  V*  and  here  the  interview  ended. 
I  One  would  have  supposed  that  Jonah  would  return 
to  his  home,  having  accomplished  the  mission  on  which 
he  was  sent ;  but  instead  of  doing  this,  he  "  went  out  of 
the  city,  and  sat  on  the  east  side  of  the  city,  and  there 
made  him  a  booth,  and  sat  under  it  in  the  shadow,  till 
he  might  see  what  would  become  of  the  city.'^  Why 
jhad  he  any  question  as  to  what  would  become  of  the 
city,  when  God  had  repented  of  the  evil  which  he  said 


58  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

he  would  do  to  it?  I  can  think  of  no  answer,  unless  it 
be  that  he  had  no  confidence  in  the  repentance  of  the 
Ninevites.  They  had  been  so  desperately  wicked  that 
their  su  Iden  repentance  appeared  more  like  a  spasm  of 
fright  than  a  genuine  turning  away  from  sin ;  and  he 
did  not  believe  it  would  last.  If  it  did  not,  if  they 
turned  back  to  their  old  ways,  he  knew  very  well  that 
God  would  certainly  bring  upon  them  the  doom  which 
had  been  pronounced.  What  was  to  become  of  the 
city,  then,  depended  upon  the  genuineness  and  the  per- 
manency of  the  reformation  which  had  been  effected ; 
and  Jonah,  still  wishing  to  see  his  prediction  fulfilled, 
determines  to  await  the  result.  He  must  wait  till  at 
least  forty  days  expire,  and  possibly  longer;  but  the 
presumption  is  that  he  intended  to  remain  only  through 
the  forty  days. 

Instead  of  taking  up  his  temporary  abode  within 
the  city  walls,  he  chose  a  point  of  observation  in  the 
p'ain  to  the  east,  and  probably  it  was  the  summit  of 
some  elevation  from  which  he  could  have  an  extended 
view.  The  booth  which  he  built  was  not  to  keep  off  the 
wind  or  the  rain ;  but  to  shelter  him  from  the  heat, 
which  is  very  intense  in  that  region  during  the  hot 
season.  It  was  not  made  of  leaves,  which  would  wilt 
and  curl  in  a  single  day  under  such  heat;  but  of  sticks 
and  small  boards  which  he  could  pick  up  in  the  vicin- 
ity. It  afforded  a  very  imperfect  shelter  from  the  direct 
rays  of  the  sun,  and  none  from  the  reflected  heat  which 
rose  from  the  surrounding  sand.  He  suffered  much, 
but  God  had  pity  on  him,  and  "  prepared  a  gourd,  and 
made  it  to  come  up  over  Jonah,  that  it  might  be  a 
shadow  over  his  head,  to  deliver  him  from  his  evil  case.'' 
That  gourd  sprang  up  in  a  single  night,  so  that  it  might 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE f  59 

appear,  as  it  was,  a  special  and  miraculous  gift  from 
God.  Jonah  was  "  exceedingly  glad  because  of  the 
gourd.^'  Doubtless  it  covered  the  whole  of  the  shanty 
which  had  so  imperfectly  sheltered  him,  shutting  out  the 
side  heat  as  well  as  the  direct  rays  of  the  sun,  and  giv- 
ing him  the  full  benefit  of  any  breeze  that  might  blow. 
But  the  relief  lasted  only  one  day.  The  next  morning, 
God  having  prepared  a  worm  that  smote  the  gourd, 
when  the  sun  became  hot  its  leaves  wilted,  turned  yel- 
low, curled  up,  and  dropped  off.  When  the  heat  ol 
the  day  had  come  Jonah  suffered  more  than  ever. 
"  The  sun  beat  upon  the  head  of  Jonah,  that  he  fainted, 
and  requested  for  himself  that  he  might  die.''  He  was 
now  angry  again ;  and  God  said  to  him,  "  Doest  thou 
well  to  be  angry  for  the  gourd?''  He  said  "  I  do  well 
to  be  angry,  even  unto  death."  I  suppose  that  he 
meant,  he  was  so  angry  that  it  would  kill  him  if  he  did 
not  get  relief.  He  does  not  claim  to  be  angry  withj 
God,  or  with  the  Ninevites,  or  with  any  person  or  thing 
in  particular.  It  was  one  of  those  fits  of  anger  to  which! 
many  persons  are  subject  when  suffering,  and  which 
makes  them  growl  and  snarl  like  a  wild  beast  in  pain. 

The  opportunity  had  now  come ;  God  had  brought 
about  the  opportunity  to  teach  Jonah  the  last  lesson 
for  which  this  series  of  events  was  projected.  Had 
Nineveh  been  destroyed  he  would  have  gone  home 
happy.  His  present  misery  was  brought  on  in  conse- 
quence of  his  desire  to  see  it  destroyed  even  yet.  He 
was  displeased  with  the  mercy  which  God  had  mani- 
fested toward  it,  and  refused  to  believe  that  this  mercy 
would  continue.  So  God  says  to  him  :  "  Thou  hast  had 
pity  on  the  gourd,  for  which  thou  hast  not  labored, 
neither  madest  it  to  grow ;  which  came  up  in  a  night, 


00  JESUS  AND  JONAS. 

and  perished  in  a  night :  and  should  not  I  have  pity  on 
Nineveh,  that  great  city,  wherein  are  more  than  six 
score  thousand  persons  that  can  not  discern  between 
their  right  hand  and  their  left  hand;  and  also  much 
cattle  ?'' 

What  a  rebuke  for  t^iC  unfeeling  hostility  of  the 
prophet  toward  a  vast  p/pulalion;  and  what  forgetful- 
ness  it  displayed  on  his  part  of  the  multitude  of  inno- 
cent babes  who  would  have  been  swallowed  up  in  the 
destruction  which  he  desired  to  witness !  The  rebuke 
was  instantaneous;  but  what  shall  we  say  of  the  train 
of  thought  which  it  awoke  in  Jonah's  mind  never  to 
cease  while  he  lived?  And  when  the  knowledge  of  this 
last  scene  came  to  spread  abroad  in  Israel,  who  can  tell 
the  good  impression  made  on  thoughtful  minds,  as  day 
after  day  and  year  after  year  the  thrilling  story  was  told, 
and  God's  chosen  people  were  made  to  realize  that  he 
was  not  their  God  only,  but  the  God  of  the  whole 
earth  ? 

If  now  we  review  the  whole  story  in  the  light  of 
our  reflections  on  it,  we  see  that  it  represents  God  as 
desiriag  the  repentance  of  the  Ninevites,  and  of  all  in 
the  proud  empire  of  Assyria  who  could  be  influenced  by 
their  example.  He  selects  as  the  preacher  through 
whose  word  this  great  reformation  may  be  effected,  the 
most  renowned  prophet  of  the  age.  Knowing  in  ad- 
vance that  this  prophet,  great  as  he  was,  would  be 
moved  by  his  knowledge  of  God's  goodness,  and  his 
own  hatred  of  Nineveh,  to  run  away  from  the  task 
assigned  him,  God  permits  him  to  flee  far  out  upon  a 
stormy  sea,  that  he  might  make  him  the  means  there  of 
turning  a  company  of  heathen  sailors  to  the  true  faith, 
and   send    them    preaching    round    the  shores   of    the 


IS  THE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE?  61 

western  world,  and  that  he  might  at  the  same  time  bring 
the  prophet  back  better  than  ever  prepared  to  do  effective 
work  in  Nineveh.  As  a  result  of  this  preparation,  the 
whole  population  of  the  great  city  is  brought  to 
repentance,  and  they  appeal  so  earnestly  to  Jehovah  for 
mercy  that  he  spares  them  after  having  doomed  them  to 
destruction.  We  need  no  historian's  pen  to  assure  us 
that  as  far  as  Nineveh  was  known,  the  news  of  this 
thrilling  experience  traveled  with  the  speed  of  the 
wind ;  and  that  an  impression  in  favor  of  fearing  and 
honoring  Jehovah  must  have  been  made  on  every  mind. 
What  could  have  been  more  worthy  of  God  than  all 
this?  .Then,  that  he  might  send  the  prophet  back  to 
bis  countrymen  with  a  new  and  kindlier  sense  of  the 
brotherhood  of  man  springing  out  of  this  universal 
Fatherhood  of  God,  the  weary  waiting  on  the  sand  hill 
follows,  and  the  whole  story  terminates  with  the  tender 
lesson  drawn  from  tlie  magic  shade  which  refreshed  the 
suffering  prophet.  Is  the  story  incredible?  I  think 
my  readers  are  ready  to  answer,  Not  if  any  other 
miracles  are  credible. 

But  there  is  another  side  to  the  question  of  incredibil- 
ity. If  the  story  of  Jonah  is  not  history,  it  is,  of  course, 
a  piece  of  fiction,  and  fiction  which  originated  in  the  brain 
of  an  Israelite.  Now  I  think  it  may  be  made  to  appear 
that  the  latter  alternative  is  incredible.  It  is  incredible, 
in  the  first  place,  that  any  Israelite,  capable  of  conceiv- 
ing and  of  writing  such  a  story,  would  be  so  irreverent 
toward  one  of  the  great  prophets  of  his  nation  as  to 
make  him  act  the  part  ascribed  to  Jonah.  And  even  if 
an  intellectual  Israelite  had  been  so  recreant  to  the 
ordinary  tradtions  of  his  countrymen  as  to  write  such  a 
story,  it  is  still  more  incredible  that  the  leaders  of  the 


62  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

chosen  people  at  any  period  of  their  history  would  have 
allowed  such  a  document  a  place  among  their  sacred 
books.  There  is  nothing  of  the  kind  to  be  found  else- 
where in  the  Bible,  and  such  aspersions  upon  the  names 
of  prophets  or  patriarchs  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  apoc- 
ryphal literature  of  the  Jews.  On  the  contrary,  the 
Jewish  writings  which  are  known  to  be  fictitious  are 
often  characterized  by  extravagant  eulogies  of  Biblical 
characters. 

This  alternative  is  incredible,  in  the  second  pla'^e, 
because  no  Israelite,  inventing  a  story  of  God's  dealings 
with  a  great  Gentile  city  like  Nineveh,  would  have  rep- 
resented him  as  being  so  regardful  of  the  welfare  of  its 
people,  so  quick  to  forgive  their  sins,  and  so  tenderly 
mindful  of  the  innocent  withiu  its  walls.  Especially 
would  no  Israelite  write  a  story  whose  culminating 
point  was  a  stern  rebuke  of  his  nation  for  animosity 
toward  an  oppressive  heathen  power.  From  this  point 
of  view,  as  well  as  from  the  other,  such  a  book,  if  written 
as  a  fiction,  would  have  so  outraged  the  feeling  of  zeal- 
ous priests  and  scribes  that  it  would  never  have  obtained 
a  place  in  the  sacred  canon.  How  can  we  imagine  that 
a  people  who  attempted  to  slay  Jesus  because  he  showed 
them  that  a  Gentile  woman  and  a  Gentile  warrior,  in 
the  days  of  Elijah  and  Elisha,  honored  these  two  prophets 
as  no  man  or  woman  in  Israel  did  or  would,  have  per- 
mitted a  book  so  full  of  rebuke  for  their  hatred  of  the 
heathen  to  be  made  a  part  of  their  own  Bible  ?  The 
thought  is  preposterous.  Yet,  this  is  the  alternative  to 
which  those  are  driven  who  affirm  that  the  story  as  told 
in  the  Scriptures  is  incredible.  Like  unbelievers  in 
general,  they  take  the  harder  side. 


IS  TEE  STORY  OF  JONAH  INCREDIBLE f  63 

This  incredibility  is  intensified  when  we  consider  the 
date  assigned  to  the  Book  of  Jonah  by  those  who  hold 
it  to  be  fictitious.  According  to  Dr.  Driver,  as  we  have 
seen,  it  was  written  in  the  fifth  century  B,  C,  after  the 
return  from  the  Babylonian  captivity.  Nineveh,  at  that 
time,  together  with  the  Assyrian  Empire  of  which  it  was 
the  head,  had  long  since  perished;  yet,  this  book,  though 
dealing  with  its  sins  and  its  doom,  gives  not  a  hint  of 
its  final  fate.  This  reticence,  if  the  assumed  date  is  the 
real  one,  could  have  been  assumed  by  its  author  only 
for  the  purpose  of  making  it  appear  that  the  book  was 
written  before  Nineveh's  fall ;  and  it  was,  therefore,  a 
piece  of  deception.  As  Nineveh  had  not  only  perished 
at  this  date,  but  had,  between  the  time  of  Jonah  and  the 
time  of  its  downfall,  carried  into  captivity  the  ten  tribes 
of  Israel,  and  visited  upon  them  unspeakable  cruelties, 
a  Jew  of  a  later  age  would  be  the  last  man  on  earth  to 
invent  a  story  showing  tender  regard  for  it  on  the  part 
of  IsraePs  God.  Furthermore,  at  the  supposed  date  of 
composition,  the  whole  of  the  twelve  tribes,  with  the 
single  exception  of  the  remnant  who  had  returned  to 
Jerusalem,  were  being  ground  under  the  heel  of  heathen 
oppression,  and  were  learning  to  hate  the  ways  of  the 
oppressors  more  and  more  with  every  passing  day.  In 
no  former  period  in  Israel's  history  was  it  so  improbable 
that  such  a  book  could  be  written  by  an  Israelite,  or 
that,  if  written,  it  would  be  received  with  any  feeling 
but  abhorrence  by  his  countrymen.  In  other  words, 
the  farther  down  the  stream  of  time  you  bring  the  date 
of  the  book,  the  more  incredible  it  is  that  any  Jewish 
writer  would  have  invented  its  story,  and  the  more  in- 
credible that  it  could  have  obtained  the  place  which  we 
know  it  did  obtain  in  the  saored  writings  of  the  Jews. 


64  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

To  br'ng  the  matter  nearer  home,  let  us  suppose  that 
some  ingenious  writer  should  now  publish  a  volume 
containing  aspersions  upon  the  character  of  one  of  the 
leading  generals  or  statesmen  of  our  revolutionary  war, 
and  rebuking  severely  as  unjust  and  cruel  the  feeling  of 
the  American  patriots  toward  their  British  foes;  and 
suppose  that,  by  common  consent  of  this  generation  of 
Americans,  these  sentiments  should  come  to  be  incorpo- 
rated in  the  standard  histories  of  the  United  States. 
This  would  be  a  state  of  things  not  one  whit  more  in- 
credible, not  to  say  impossible,  than  the  theory  that  the 
Book  of  Jonah  is  a  fictitious  narrative  written  by  an 
uninspired  author  in  an  age  of  Jewish  subjection  to  a 
heathen  power. 

Finally,  when  we  add  to  the  incredibility  of  the 
theory  that  this  book  is  a  fiction,  the  solemn  assertion 
by  Jesus  that  its  leading  incidents  are  real  transactions, 
we  can  safely  conclude  this  protracted  discussion  with 
the  affirmation,  that  none  of  the  supernatural  events 
recorded  in  the  Old  Testament  are  supported  by  stronger 
evidence  of  authenticity  than  those  recorded  in  the 
Book  of  Jonah, 


TV.    THE  THREE  DAYS  AND  THREE 
NIGHTS. 

The  words  of  Jesus,  "As  Jonah  was  three  days  and 
three  nights  in  the  bowels  of  the  sea  monster,  so  shall 
the  Son  of  man  be  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the 
heart  of  the  earth/'  are  very  puzzling  to  many  modern 
readers  because  of  their  apparent  inconsistency  with  the 
accounts  given  elsewhere  of  the  time  between  his  death 
and  his  resurrection.  That  he  was  buried  on  Friday 
evening,  and  that  he  arose  on  Sunday  morning,  is  so 
clearly  set  forth  in  the  Gospel  narratives,  and  so  gener- 
ally accepted  as  true,  that  it  must  be  acknowledged  as  a 
settled  fact.  But  this  is  totally  irreconcilable  with  the 
statement  that  he  was  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the 
heart  of  the  earth,  if  the  latter  is  to  be  understood  in 
the  sense  now  attached  to  the  words.  Some  scholars 
have  thought  the  contradiction  to  be  real,  and  have  for 
this  reason  thought  that  the  verse  containing  the  words 
ascribed  to  Jesus  are  an  interpolation  in  Matthew's 
Gospel ;  while  others  have  been  driven  to  novel  theories 
as  to  the  time  Jesus  spent  in  the  tomb.  Many  attempts 
have  been  made  to  show  that  there  is  no  real  contradic- 
tion ;  but  the  most  of  these  have  proved  unsatisfactory. 
It  is  the  purpose  of  this  essay  to  make  another  such 
attempt,  and  I  trust  that  the  reader  will  find  it  sup- 
ported by  competent  and  sufficient  evidence. 

The  contradiction  between  the  statement  made  and 
the  facts  recorded  is  so  palpable  from  the  point  of  view 

65 


66  JESUS  AND  JONAH. 

of  our  English  usage,  that  if  the  two  are  harmonious 
the  harmony  must  be  found  in  some  peculiar  usage  of 
Hebrew  writers  and  speakers — a  usage  by  which  the  ex- 
pression three  days  and  three  nights  is  the  equivalent  of 
a  i-mall  part  of  one  day,  all  of  the  next,  and  a  part  of 
the  third.  S'^ch  usage  would  appear  very  strange  to  us, 
but  if  it  really  existed  among  the  Hebrews  its  strange- 
ness can  not  nullify  it.  Its  existence  must  not  be 
assumed  in  order  to  get  rid  of  a  difficulty  of  interpre- 
tation ;  it  must  be  demonstrated  independently  of  the 
passage  in  which  the  difficulty  is  found.  Can  this 
be  done? 

It  was  the  invariable  custom  of  Hebrew  writers  to 
count  a  fraction  of  a  year,  or  a  day,  at  the  beginning  of 
a  series  and  at  the  end  of  it,  as  each  a  year,  or  a  day. 
This  can  be  demonstrated  by  many  examples,  and  espe- 
cially by  the  parallel  numbers  recorded  in  the  Books  of 
Kings.  Abijam  began  to  reign  over  Judah  in  the 
eighteenth  year  of  Jeroboam ;  ^e  reigned  three  years, 
and  yet  he  died  in  the  twentieth  year  of  Jeroboam  (I. 
Kings  XV.  1,  2,  8,  9).  Evidently  the  three  years  are 
made  up  by  a  part  of  Jeroboam's  eighteenth,  all  of  his 
nineteenth,  and  a  part  of  his  twentieth.  Nadab  began  to 
reign  over  Israel  in  the  second  year  of  Asa,  and  reigned 
two  years,  yet  he  died  in  the  third  year  of  Asa  (xv.  25, 
28).  His  two  years  were  a  part  of  Asa's  second,  and  a 
part  of  his  third ;  and  they  may  have  been  not  more 
than  one  whole  year.  In  the  same  third  year  of  Asa, 
Baasha  began  to  reign,  and  reigned  twenty-four  years, 
yet  he  died  in  the  twenty- sixth  year  of  Asa,  one  year 
too  soon  in  our  mode  of  counting  (xv.  33;  xvi.  6,  8). 
Elah  began  in  the  twenty-sixth  year  of  Asa,  reigned  two 
years,  and  died  in  the  twenty-seventh  of  Asa   (8-10). 


TUE  THREE  DA  YS  AND  THREE  NIGHTS.  67 

This  method  is  pursued  till  the  fall  of  the  northern  King- 
dom without  variation ;  and  the  consequence  is,  tliat 
in  estimating  the  duration  of  the  two  kingdoms  of 
Israel  and  Judah  by  the  regnal  years  of  their  kings,  it 
is  necessary  to  deduct  at  least  half  a  year  from  the  given 
number  of  every  one  who  reigned  more  than  one  year. 
Even  then  the  result  is  in  some  degree  uncertain ;  for  we 
can  never  know  wliat  part  of  a  year  is  counted  in  indi- 
vidual instances,  as  a  year.  To  this  extent  Hebrew 
chronology  is  uncertain,  though  the  uncertainty  is  con- 
fined within  narrow  limits. 

That  the  same  custom  prevailed  in  regard  to  days  is 
proved  by  a  large  number  of  examples.  Joseph  put 
his  brothers  ^' into  ward  three  days^^;  yet  he  released 
them  '^the  third  day''  (Gen.  xl'ii.  17,  18).  By  our 
count  he  would  have  released  them  the  fourth  day. 
Rehoboam  said  to  the  people  who  had  petitioned  him  to 
make  their  burdens  lighter,  "  Depart  yet  three  days,  then 
come  again  to  me";  yet  the  historian  says,  "  Jeroboam 
and  all  the  people  came  to  Rehoboam,  the  third  day 
as  the  king  bade,  saying,  Come  to  me  again  the  third 
day."  Here  it  is  clear  tliat  a  part  of  the  day  in  which 
he  dismissed  them,  all  of  the  next  day,  and  the  early 
part  of  the  day  in  which  they  came  back  to  him,  make 
up  the  three  days;  yet  there  were  probably  less  than 
two  days  according  to  our  mode  of  counting.  Esther 
sent  word  to  Mordecai,  "  Go  gather  together  all  the 
Jews  that  are  present  in  Shushan,  and  fast  for  me,  and 
neither  eat  nor  drink  three  days,  night  or  day ;  I  also 
and  my  maidens  will  fast  in  like  manner;  and  so  will  I 
go  in  unto  the  king";  yet  she  went  in  on  the  third  day 
(Esth.  iv.  16 ;  v.  1).  Here  are  three  examples  taken 
from  the  Old  Testament.      There  are  others  in  the  new. 


G8  Ji:SUS  AND  JONAH. 

Cornelius  said  to  Peter,  "  Four  days  ago,  until  this  hour, 
I  was  keeping  the  ninth  hour  of  prayer  in  my  house"; 
yet  if  we  count  from  the  time  of  his  prayer  as  stated  in 
the  beginning  of  the  story,  we  find  that  it  was  exactly 
three  days  according  to  our  mode  of  counting.  He  was 
praying  in  the  afternoon  at  the  ninth  hour  when  the 
angel  appeared  to  him  (Acts  x.  3);  he  immediately 
"started  the  soldier  and  the  two  servants  for  Peter  (7,  8) ; 
they  reached  the  house  where  Peter  was  lodging  the 
next  day  at  noon  (9)  not  quite  one  day  after  the  vision ; 
Peter  has  them  to  stay  all  night,  and  the  next  day  they 
all  start  for  C^esarea  (23) ;  and  on  the  next  day  at  the 
ninth  hour  they  meet  Cornelius  (24,  30).  In  order  to 
make  the  four  days,  he  counted  less  than  three  hours  of 
the  first  day,  the  whole  of  the  second  and  third,  and 
nine  hours  of  the  fourth.  In  this  instance  we  have  to 
deduct  exactly  twenty-four  hours  from  the  number  of 
days  given  in  order  to  have  the  exact  number.  Again, 
the  chief  priests  and  the  Pharisees,  after  the  burial  of 
Jesus,  say  to  Pilate,  '^  We  remember  that  that  deceiver 
said  while  he  was  yet  with  us.  After  three  days  I  will 
rise  again.  Command,  therefore,  that  the  sepulcher  be 
made  sure  until  the  third  day '^  (Matt,  xxvii.  63,  64). 
Why  say  "till  the  third  day,"  if  he  was  to  rise  after 
three  days  f  We  would  have  said,  till  the  fourth  day ; 
f  )r  if  he  was  to  rise  after  three  days  it  would  not  be 
earlier  than  the  fourth  day,  though  it  might  be  later. 
Evidently  they  understood  the  time  included  in  the  ex- 
pression after  three  days  as  terminating  on  the  third  day. 
And  as  Jesus  had  been  buried  near  the  close  of  a  day, 
and  they  expected  him  to  rise,  if  at  all,  on  the  third 
day,  they  must  have  counted  the  small  fraction  of  a  day 
that  remained  after  his  burial  as  one  of  the  three  days. 


THE  THREE  DAYS  AND  THREE  NIGHTS.  69 

Their  expression,  ^'  till  the  third  day/'  also  shows  that 
they  expected  him  to  rise  before  the  third  day  would 
end,  and  that  they  therefore  count  a  part  of  that  day 
as  a  day. 

Finally,  Jesus  himself  has  the  same  usage  in  his  own 
references  to  the  time  between  his  death  and  his  resur- 
rection ;  for  he  at  one  time  says  that  he  would  rise  on 
the  third  day,  and  at  others,  that  he  would  rise  after 
three  days.  See  Mark  viii.  31;  ix.  31;  x.  34,  for  the 
latter;  and  Matt.  xvi.  21;  xvii.  23;  xx.  19;  Luke  ix. 
22 ;  xviii.  33 ;  xxiv.  7,  46,  for  the  former. 

Now  of  the  passages  cited,  it  is  only  those  in  Mark 
which  contain  the  words,  "  after  three  days '';  while  the 
parallels  in  Matthew  and  Luke  have  the  words,  ^'  the 
third  day.''  If  we  understand  that  Jesus  in  every 
instance  used  the  words  given  in  Matthew  and  Luke, 
then  we  must  understand  that  Mark  construes  his  ex- 
pression "on  the  third  day,"  as  the  equivalent  of  "after 
three  days."  And  on  the  other  hand,  if  the  expression 
which  Mark  has  is  the  literal  quotation  from  Jesus,  then 
Matthew  and  Luke  give  "on  th^  third  day"  as  the 
equivalent  of  that.  The  Pharisees,  as  we  have  seen, 
understand  him  as  saying,  or  at  least  as  meaning,  that  he 
would  rise  "  after  three  days ";  for  such  is  their  expres- 
sion in  addressing  Pilate  (Matt,  xxvii.  63). 

We  are  now  prepared  to  consider  the  particular  words 
of  Jesus  which  are  under  discussion — **The  Son  of  man 
shall  be  three  days  and  three  nights  in  the  heart  of  the 
earth."  We  have  seen  that  "  after  three  days,"  and  "  on 
tLe  third  day,"  were  equivalents  with  him  and  with  his 
contemporaries;  but  after  three  days  is  actually  after 
three  days  and  three  nights.  To  make  this  very  simple, 
if  you  begin  to  count  on  Monday  morning,  after  one 


70  JESUS  AND  JONAFt. 

day  would  bring  you  to  Tuebday  morning;  after  two 
days  brings  you  to  Wednesday  morning ;  and  after  three 
days  brings  you  to  Thursday  morning;  but  in  passing 
over  three  days  you  have  also  passed  over  three  nights, 
viz  ,  Monday  night,  Tuesday  night,  and  Wednesday 
night.  If,  then,  Jesus  could  at  one  time  say  in  strict 
compliance  with  Jewish  usage,  that  he  would  rise  after 
three  days,  he  could  with  precisely  the  same  meaning 
say  that  he  would  be  in  the  grave  three  days  and  three 
nights.  Neither  assertion  would  be  true  according  to 
modern  usage,  but  both  would  be  strictly  true  according 
to  the  usage  of  the  Hebrews. 

This  conclusion  is  confirmed  by  another  considera- 
tion. It  is  this — that  when  Jewish  writers  wished  to 
be  exact  in  the  use  of  the  cardinal  numbers  for  years, 
months,  etc.,  they  used  the  qualifying  term  full,  or 
whole,  before  the  substantive.  Thus  a  law  in  Leviticus 
provided  that  if  a  house  in  a  walK  d  city  were  sold,  the 
owner  might  redeem  it  '^  within  a  whole  year  after  it  is 
sold;  for  a  full  year  shall  he  have  the  right  of  redemp- 
tion^' (xxv.  29),  It  was  after  "two  full  years''  that 
Absalom  took  revenge  on  Amnon,  and  when  he 
returned  from  banishment  on  account  of  slaying  Amnon, 
he  dwelt  "two  full  years"  in  Jerusalem  before  he  saw 
the  king's  face.  Zedekiah,  the  false  prophet,  said  that  the 
vessels  of  the  house  of  the  Lord,  which  had  been  carried 
to  Babylon,  would  be  brought  back  within  "  two  full 
y' ars "  (Jer.  xxvii.  3).  Stephen  says  that  Moses  was 
"full  forty  years  old"  when  he  slew  the  Egyptian  and 
fled.  Luke  says  that  Barnabas  and  Saul  remained  with 
the  church  at  Antioch  "  a  whole  year,"  and  that  Paul 
dwelt  in  his  own  hired  house  in  Rome  "two  whole 
years."     In  view  of  this  usage  we  can  see  that  if  Jesus 


THE  THREE  DAYS  AND  THREE  NIGHTS.  71 

had  meant  that  he  would  be  in  the  heart  of  the  earth 
three  days  and  three  nights  as  we  understand  the  words, 
he  would  have  said  three  full  days  and  n'ghts ;  or  if  he 
had  meant  what  we  mean  by  "  after  three  days/^  he 
would  have  said,  After  three  full  days,  or  three  lohole 
days. 

If  it  shall  still  appear  to  any  one  that  such  a  usage 
is  so  far  from  accuracy  of  expression  as  to  be  somewhat 
incredible,  let  him  consider  some  usages  of  our  own, 
which,  though  not  the  same,  are  analogous.  Suppose 
that  a  freshly  landed  Chinaman  were  to  employ  an 
American  laborer  for  a  month,  agreeing  to  pay  him 
twenty  dollars.  At  the  end  of  the  month  the  man 
claims  his  wages,  though  he  has  labored  only  twenty-six 
days.  The  Chinaman  would  think  himself  cheated  out 
of  four  days^iabor  until  he  was  informed  that  according 
to  American  usage  a  month^s  labor  is  not  counted  at 
thirty  days,  but  at  only  twenty-six.  Or  suppose  that  he 
sends  his  son  to  an  American  school-  which  begins  the 
first  day  of  March  and  is  to  continue  five  months.  The 
Chinaman  counts  the  time,  and  expects  his  son  to  receive 
instruction  to  the  end  of  July,  which  would  be  twenty- 
one  weeks  and  six  days.  But  at  the  end  of  twenty 
weeks  the  tuition  fee  is  demanded,  and  he  thinks  that  he 
has  been  cheated  out  of  two  weeks,  until  he  learns  that 
in  American  school  parlance  a  month,  which  he  counted 
as  sometimes  thirty  days,  and  sometimes  as  thirty-one,  is 
only  four  weeks.  But  worse  still,  he  finds  upon  careful 
count  that  there  were  two  days  in  every  week  of  the 
twenty  in  which  his  son  was  not  taught ;  and  thus  the 
twenty-one  weeks  and  six  days  for  which  he  thought  he 
wa-?  contracting,  has  been  reduced  to  just  one  hundred 
days,  or  fourteen  weeks  and  two   days.     He  thinks  that, 


72  JESUS  AND  JONAH, 

these  Americans  have  a  very  strange  way  of  counting 
time,  and  he  is  right  in  so  thinking;  yet  we  go  on 
counting  this  way  without  stopping  to  think  how  strange 
it  is.  So  it  was  with  the  Jews  in  their  method,  and  in 
reality  their  method  did  not  involve  so  many  and  so 
great  inaccuracies  as  our  own.  This  consideration 
should  silence  all  cavilling  about  the  method  of  the 
Jews,  and  about  the  apparently  inconsistent  statements 
with  reference  to  the  time  that  our  Lord  spent  in 
Joseph^s  tomb. 


Date  Due 


BS1605.8.M14 
Jesus  andJonah... 

Princeton  Theological  Seminary-Speer  Library 


1    1012  00054  9651 


